Sánchez unveils Spain’s largest anti-wildfire operation after devastating 2025 fires

Spain remains among the European countries most exposed to the effects of climate change, with rising temperatures fuelling increasingly intense heatwaves, prolonged droughts and more destructive wildfires. 

The country endured its hottest summer on record in 2025, when nearly 400,000 hectares were destroyed by fire — the largest area recorded by the European Forest Fire Information System. ALSO READ: Study finds climate change made Spain’s wildfires 40 times more likely.

‘We will put in place all the resources’ available to the government ‘to mitigate this emergency situation as much as possible and to prevent it happening again on this scale’, Sánchez said during a presentation at the Torrejón airbase near Madrid.

He said the measures represented ‘the state’s largest deployment for an anti-fires campaign … because we are also aware that, unfortunately, this threat is growing’.

According to Sánchez, the operation will involve new helicopters and aircraft, amphibious planes, drones, specialised vehicles, thermal imaging cameras and advanced monitoring technology to confront fires that strike ‘with greater force, greater virulence’ and are increasingly difficult to control.

The interior ministry said Spain would once again bring forward the official start of the forest fire season by two weeks, to 1 June, in response to the heightened risk.

Sánchez also pledged improved coordination between different levels of government in an effort to strengthen responses to major fires — an issue that has often generated political tension in Spain’s decentralised system, where regional administrations hold primary responsibility for emergency management.

Last summer’s worst-hit areas — Galicia, Castilla y León and Extremadura — are all governed by right-wing administrations, leading to criticism and political disputes with the socialist-led central government. ALSO READ: Spain’s wildfires spark new political clash, as PP call civil protection head ‘just another arsonist’.

‘This battle … is won together with unity, with institutional loyalty, and not with confrontation,’ Sánchez said.

‘Fire does not distinguish between administrations, it does not ask who governs,’ the prime minister added, renewing his call for ‘a national pact against the climate emergency’. Pedro Sánchez visits wildfire-hit Galicia and pledges ‘national pact’ to address climate emergency.