With forest fires still burning across northern and western Spain, the AEMET meteorological agency said provisional readings for the August 3-18 heatwave exceeded the last record, set in July 2022, and showed an average temperature 4.6C higher than previous events.
AEMET said a 10-day period from August 8 to August 17, was the hottest 10 consecutive days recorded in Spain since "at least 1950".
The August heatwave exacerbated tinderbox conditions that have fuelled wildfires which have killed four people and forced thousands out of their homes.
Four people have also died in fires in Portugal, where emergency services are still struggling to control the blazes.
More than 1,100 deaths in Spain have been linked to the August heatwave, according to an estimate released Tuesday by the Carlos III Health Institute.
The institute had already said that 1,060 deaths in July could be attributed to excess heat, a 50 percent rise on the figure for July 2024.
Since it began keeping records in 1975, AEMET has registered 77 heatwaves in Spain, with six going 4C or more above the average. Five of those have been since 2019.
Scientists say climate change is driving longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves worldwide.
The agency said that it is "a scientific fact that current summers are hotter than in previous decades".
"Each summer is not always going to be hotter than the previous one, but there is a clear trend towards much more extreme summers. What is key is adapting to, and mitigating, climate change," it added.
Fires burning in northern regions have destroyed more than 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) in the past weeks and a record of more than 400,000 hectares since the start of the year.
Authorities say they are only now starting to control the fires.
Firefighters and water-bombing planes from nine European countries have been helping Spanish emergency services.
Hundreds of people are still kept away from their homes though many have started returning in the past 24 hours.
Portugal announced its fourth fatality from the current wildfires on Saturday. The 45-year-old fireman had been critically injured battling the flames last week.
More than 60,000 hectares of land have burned in Portugal in the current heatwave and more than 278,000 hectares since the start of the year.
Fires ravage an ageing rural Spain
Benavente, Spain (AFP) Aug 24, 2025 - The biggest fear for senior citizens taking refuge in Benavente, a town in a zone ravaged by vast wildfires in Spain, is that "everything they own could burn", its mayor Beatriz Asensio told AFP.
She was speaking as she visited a temporary shelter in her municipality, in Zamora province in the Castile and Leon region, hosting residents from surrounding areas who had been evacuated ahead of fast-moving fire fronts.
Many were elderly, reflecting the demographic decline in much of rural Spain.
Zamora has the greatest concentration of residents in Spain aged over 80, representing 12.3 percent of the province's population, according to official statistics.
Ourense, in the neighbouring region of Galicia -- also weathering wildfires -- was close behind, with 12.1 percent.
The fires burning in the north and west of Spain have destroyed more than 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) in the past weeks, killing four people. Authorities say they are only now starting to come under control.
"In Zamora province, we have an extremely large number of elderly, a lot of people who live alone, a little helpless," said Jesus Jose Gonzalez Tejada, the commander of Zamora's civil guard, which was tasked with evacuating the at-risk residents.
"There are times you have to remind them: 'Please get your medicine, things you need, some clothes, your mobile phone to be able to tell your family, a charger, very important," he told AFP.
- A past consumed by flames -
Among many of the elderly, a shared fear raised its head: that of irreparable loss, the possibility of needing to rebuild but lacking the youth and money to do so.
Amelia Bueno, 79, from the northern Asturias region, has spent more than 30 summers vacationing in Ribadelago Nuevo, a lakeside village in Zamora, from which she was evacuated.
She never sought to holiday anywhere else. "I've spent 32 years coming for vacation... Don't take me away or send me someplace else," she said.
Yet, she accepts with resignation the situation she is facing.
"The most important thing is that no one gets hurt. And that we're all right and being looked after. And that this is the hardest thing that could happen to us."
Pedro Fernandez, 85, followed a well-trodden path, of leaving when young to live and work in Barcelona, but hanging on to his parents' home in the region, in Vigo de Sanabria, for his vacations.
"Starting over again at my age wouldn't make any sense," he told AFP.
"I'm really afraid for my house," he said. "I inherited the house from my father, and if it's destroyed it can't be rebuilt. Building a house like that today would cost a fortune."
In his case, though, fortune smiled.
Fernandez and others from Vigo de Sanabria were able to return to the village on Friday, where they found their properties undamaged.
The same cannot be said of many other Spanish villages, where the flames have consumed the buildings -- and with them the past and their memories.
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