Bombay Durpun - Spain fights to 'save lives' as wildfire evacuees shelter in Madrid

The fires in the parched countryside have forced 60,000 people to flee their homes, the interior ministry said, in what officials have called the region's worst fire on record. The central government delegate in Madrid had earlier given a higher estimate of around 70,000.

"Our priority, our thinking, our aim is for your lives, to save your lives and protect inhabited areas," Sanchez told reporters in the village of Cenicientos in the fire zone.

"We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be."

Early on Saturday the smell of burning reached the streets of central Madrid, forcing them to keep their windows closed. The health ministry on X advised people to avoid staying outside for long periods because of bad air quality.

Evacuees from surrounding villages were bussed in to shelter in sports halls around the capital.

When flames reached the village of Robledo de Chavela, Rosa, 56, refused to leave at first because she wanted to arrange for carers to rescue the feral cats that she keeps.

"I felt very ill because I have asthma. I started coughing and I threw up," she told AFP at a gymnasium in the northern Madrid suburb of Alcobendas.

"In the end ... they (police) came to get me," she said, asking not to be identified by her last name as she was concerned for her safety.

"They didn't do anything for the cats, but they told me I had get out of the house one way or the other."

- 'Opportunity' to beat fire -

The interior ministry said on X on Saturday afternoon that another 30,000 people had been evacuated from villages near Madrid and nearly 30,000 from neighbouring Avila province, bringing the total who have fled to 60,000.

It said 8,000 were ordered to stay in their homes in Madrid and 20,000 in Avila.

Easing heat overnight offered a "window of opportunity this weekend to fight... this very serious fire", Sanchez said.

Two separate wildfires in the Madrid region combined on Friday to form one huge blaze, which threatened to merge with a third near Avila in the neighbouring Castilla y Leon region.

A separate, smaller fire in a ravine near Valencia in the east meanwhile killed one person, the local authority in the affected town of Manises said on X, without giving further details.

The Madrid regional government said on X that more than 2,000 people were being looked after in 14 emergency evacuation centres.

Jacqueline Villafranca, 38, from Peru, told AFP she was evacuated in about an hour on Friday evening from the village of Navalagamella to Alcobendas with her husband and two daughters, aged 16 and two.

When the fire alerts sounded on telephones, "I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything," she said at the sports hall, where they sat dozing and eating snacks.

"Yesterday was unbearable. My daughter came home from holiday camp and said: 'Mum, I can't open my eyes, my eyes are burning'" from the smoke, she said.

"And then the alerts started to sound and I evacuated."

So far this year fires have burned more than 168,000 hectares in Spain, according to the EU's European Forest Fire Information System.

Spain recorded its worst wildfire season in recent history in 2025, when more than 393,000 hectares were destroyed, EFFIS said.

A.Krishnamurthy--BD