Photos: Spain and France's battle record wildfires

This photograph shows the building of a painting company destroyed by a wildfire in a business park in Biscarrosse, southwestern France, on July 28, 2026.Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images hide caption From Spain to southwestern France, around 330,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and holiday sites as some of Europe's worst wildfires of the summer spread across the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic coast.

In France's Gironde region near Bordeaux and in wildfire-hit areas of Spain, flames are being fueled by extreme heat — and scientists say some fires are now creating their own weather systems, making them even harder to control."You cannot stop a storm, so you will not stop a firestorm," says Jean-Baptiste Filippi, a fire-weather expert at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), or National Centre for Scientific Research.Europe, the world's fastest-warming continent, is facing increasingly frequent and intense fire seasons, heating at more than twice the global average according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The Gironde wildfire alone has burned land equivalent to four times the size of Paris and displaced 220,000 people.The devastation across Spain and France continues to reshape communities and landscapes, serving as a stark reminder of the growing threat posed by climate change."Climate change is here.

It is real.It is already causing devastating effects," said Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain.

Aesir Diaz, 31, a technician with Spain's Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigades (BRIF), center, sits next to teammates during a break from battling a wildfire in Sotillo de Adrada, Ávila province, Spain, as the fire continues to spread, Tuesday, July 28, 2026.Manu Fernandez/AP ...