Emergency crews across France and Spain are fighting unprecedented wildfires that have forced the evacuation of thousands across the countries.

France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez reported Friday that over 110,000 people in the Department of Gironde have been evacuated, with Nuñez telling French broadcaster TF1 that the country has never seen a “convective fire of this magnitude.”

An estimated 60,000 people were also recently evacuated in Spain due to multiple fires burning outside Madrid. Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Interior of the Community of Madrid, Carlos Novillo, said the fires are “beyond extinguishing capacity” with authorities upgrading the fires’ danger level to 3, marking a “national emergency.”

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The relatively normal wildfire season that Europe had been experiencing has gone up in flames over the past few weeks. Burned area across the European Union had been trending just above the 20-year average for most of the year, until the numbers exploded to near record-breaking highs during the week of July 8. Since then, over 254,000 hectares (627,000 acres) have burned, just 16,000 hectares short of 2025’s total during the same week.

“Although this wildfire season has, up to this date, slightly less burned area than in 2025 (the worst year on record), it is still above the average of the last 20 years (2006-2025),” the European Forest Fires Information System said.

Europe’s land is forecast to keep burning as very extreme fire weather conditions dominate numerous regions, including vast swaths of land from southwestern France into northern Spain, along with some pockets across Portugal, the British Isles and Ireland, according to the EFFIS.

Other areas are experiencing extreme fire weather conditions, including the wider Iberian Peninsula, western and central France, and northern Finland, along with parts of the western Balkans.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Mediterranean, a heatwave across northern Africa has led to severe fires in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.