{"response":{"status":"ok","userTier":"developer","total":1,"content":{"id":"world/live/2026/jul/27/europe-wildfires-france-spain-emmanuel-macron-crisis-meeting-pedro-sanchez-castillon-latest-news-updates","type":"liveblog","sectionId":"world","sectionName":"World news","webPublicationDate":"2026-07-27T16:42:23Z","webTitle":"Europe wildfires: Officials warn that wildfires could still be burning in November – as it happened","webUrl":"https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/27/europe-wildfires-france-spain-emmanuel-macron-crisis-meeting-pedro-sanchez-castillon-latest-news-updates","apiUrl":"https://content.guardianapis.com/world/live/2026/jul/27/europe-wildfires-france-spain-emmanuel-macron-crisis-meeting-pedro-sanchez-castillon-latest-news-updates","fields":{"headline":"Europe wildfires: Officials warn that wildfires could still be burning in November – as it happened","firstPublicationDate":"2026-07-27T07:41:41Z","lastModified":"2026-07-27T16:55:19Z","bodyText":"Firefighters in France and Spain are racing to bring huge wildfires under control before another heatwave later this week that will complicate efforts to tame the flames. Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said Monday and Tuesday were “absolutely crucial days” before temperatures rise again from Wednesday onwards. EU officials have said wildfires could still be burning until early November in what threatens to be a record-breaking year for the area of land burned. A fire in the hilly terrain of Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, burning 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres). Authorities are battling two separate fires north-west of Madrid, taking the total area of scorched land near the capital to 70,000 hectares. The wildfire in Gironde is “unlike any we have ever seen in France” as it “follows its own logic rather than any known pattern,” the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region’s prefect Sophie Brocas warned. Updating the media on the fight against the blaze, she said the constantly evolving nature of the fire forced firefighters to “constantly adapt” to the circumstances. Spanish state meteorological agency Aemet has just issued a new warning, saying the heatwave expected to start on Wednesday will be “long” and “last, at least, until Sunday,” with “the risk of fire rising to extreme levels, hindering firefighting efforts.” Aemet’s note warns of “a significant of even extraordinary level of danger” for those involved in outdoor activities and vulnerable groups, including elderly people and people with cardiovascular conditions. The wildfires around Bordeaux in southwestern France have delivered a shock to the regional economy, finance minister Roland Lescure said. The region is one of the centres of French wine production and a major centre for tourism, Reuters noted. Firefighters battling devastating fires in France have had to contend with a new threat: immense fire clouds that create their own wind and even lightning that can spark fresh blazes. Known as “fire clouds” or pyrocumulonimbus clouds, these ominous-looking thunderstorms are created by extreme wildfires and can exacerbate already extremely dangerous conditions. The European Union is ramping up the number of firefighting planes and helicopters sent to help tackle blazes raging in southwest France, the bloc’s crisis management chief told AFP. “We currently have nine aerial assets deployed on site, and tomorrow we will have 11, drawn from our European strategic reserve,” EU commissioner Hadja Lahbib said. Provisional data on wildfires in Spain shows that more than 170,000 hectares of forest land have been affected since the beginning of the year – a nearly sixfold increase on the almost 29,000 recorded in the same period in 2025. Sitting in their suburban apartment in Mérignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Krishma, an interpreter, and her husband, Nassir, first felt a sense of dread when a strange black cloud turned the sky dark in the middle of the day. Then a bitter burning smell filled the air outside. “The sky changed colour. It seemed like a cloud but it was smoke covering the sun – it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It didn’t seem real,” said Nassir, an English literature graduate from Kabul who has been living in France for seven years. “We couldn’t breathe easily; you could feel it in your lungs.” The acrid smell, which at first seemed like burning rubber then unmistakably like wood smoke, was blowing on the wind from the massive wildfire in Gironde in south-western France. The blaze has torn through 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris, causing one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war. The government on Monday said that although the fire had stopped growing, it was still blazing and a new heatwave this week could make it harder to fight. As authorities carried out one of the biggest evacuations in modern French history, Krishma and Nassir were among 220,000 people ordered to flee their homes in Gironde. Many people were evacuated from wooded areas directly hit by fire, where at least 240 homes were destroyed. But in an unprecedented move, tens of thousands more were ordered by police to evacuate from more built-up, urban streets as the fire reached 9 miles (15km) from the outer edge of Bordeaux’s vast suburban area. Firefighters in France and Spain are facing another day battling wildfires that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being evacuated, with another heatwave expected to hit this week. French authorities have said this year’s wildfires, particularly the Gironde fire near the south-western city of Bordeaux, are ‘completely exceptional’, with more than 116,000 hectares of forest and vegetation burned since the beginning of the year, compared with 70,000 in total last year. Lucy Hough speaks to Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan… Scientists say Europe is enduring a “firewave”, the wildfire equivalent of a heatwave, fuelled by “whiplash” weather supercharged by the climate crisis. Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London: So far, Europe is not experiencing an unprecedented number of wildfires. What is uncommon is the current number of destructive wildfires: fires that spread rapidly, overwhelm fire brigades and force communities to evacuate. The connection with this summer’s repeated heatwaves is strong. Prolonged periods of hot, dry weather leave vegetation unusually dry and therefore much more flammable. When an ignition occurs under these conditions, a wildfire can escalate rapidly. This is precisely why we coined the term ‘firewave’. This is the wildfire equivalent of a heatwave: a period of exceptionally high wildfire activity that overwhelms the emergency response of a city, region or nation. Firefighters cannot stop every wildfire, Rein said: As Europe adapts to even warmer summers, we need to move beyond reacting to disasters and start building wildfire protection before the next firewave arrives. Matthew Jones, at the University of East Anglia: A major factor behind these latest fires appears to be a ‘whiplash’ effect. Large stocks of dense vegetation built up during the unusually wet winter and spring and have since been parched by extreme heat, creating a tinderbox of fuels ready to burn. We are seeing this fingerprint of climate change around the world, but especially in Mediterranean and seasonally dry climates. The risks are rising, and the result has been a succession of deadly events, from southeast Australia, Chile and South Africa to the western US, and southern Europe. Climate scientists have been warning about these risks for decades: this is just one cost of inaction on climate. The impacts of climate change are already here, and Europe is once again experiencing them through loss of life, evacuations and severe economic disruption. Vikki Thompson, climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh: Climate change increases the risk of wildfires as an increase in hot and dry conditions lead to exceptional fire danger [and] Europe is the fastest warming continent, heating at roughly double the global average. We know this is caused by fossil fuel burning – and so a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels is critical to avoid even higher temperatures and their consequences. This week parts of the UK will experience the ‘perfect’ weather conditions for wildfires: hot, dry, and windy. This leads to the exceptional fire danger. Firefighters battling devastating fires in France have had to contend with a new threat: immense fire clouds that create their own wind and even lightning that can spark fresh blazes. Known as “fire clouds” or pyrocumulonimbus clouds, these ominous-looking thunderstorms are created by extreme wildfires and can exacerbate already extremely dangerous conditions. This phenomenon, which is new to France, is yet another consequence of human-caused climate change, according to French researcher Jean-Baptiste Filippi, who studies wildfires. He said: It is a common phenomenon in Portugal, California and Australia, where firefighters are more used to them. In Portugal, they had been rare until the deadly 2017 fires in Pedrogao Grande changed things. In France, pyrocumulonimbus clouds are quite new. There were some in Landiras south of Bordeaux in 2022, but not for long. Therefore, we need to learn how to manage fires that creates their own wind – this is something relatively new. The wildfire in Gironde is “unlike any we have ever seen in France” as it “follows its own logic rather than any known pattern,” the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region’s prefect Sophie Brocas warned. Updating the media on the fight against the blaze, she said the constantly evolving nature of the fire forced firefighters to “constantly adapt” to the circumstances. She warned that the fire is “not over,” and remains “extremely dangerous.” “Our absolute priority is saving lives,” she said. Spanish state meteorological agency Aemet has just issued a new warning, saying the heatwave expected to start on Wednesday will be “long” and “last, at least, until Sunday,” with “the risk of fire rising to extreme levels, hindering firefighting efforts.” Aemet’s note warns of “a significant of even extraordinary level of danger” for those involved in outdoor activities and vulnerable groups, including elderly people and people with cardiovascular conditions. Temperatures are expected to get close to or even surpass 40C in several parts of the country. As part of their efforts to stop the spread of blaze, French firefighters are sometimes force to cut some trees down to create a natural firebreak and deprive the fire of further fuel – as we can see in these pictures from Gironde. The wildfires around Bordeaux in southwestern France have delivered a shock to the regional economy, finance minister Roland Lescure said. The region is one of the centres of French wine production and a major centre for tourism, Reuters noted. “It’s like a clap of thunder for an area which could have done without this,” Lescure told reporters. in Brussels EU officials have warned that wildfires could still be burning as late as early November in what threatens to be a record-breaking year for the area of land consumed by flames. A European Commission official said the wildfire season had begun in April and could last until early November. The European commissioner for crisis response Hadja Lahbib has said it is likely the damage from wildfires will exceed previous records. The EU executive has coordinated the dispatch of seven planes and four helicopters to France, as well as six planes and three forest firefighting teams to Spain, after both countries triggered the bloc’s emergency assistance mechanism. EU officials have also been dispatched to the Bordeaux region to assist local authorities, who are grappling with the mega fire in the Gironde region that has burned an area four times the size of Paris. Officials stressed the unprecedented nature of the fires, which spread rapidly over large areas. A recent fire in southern Spain that killed 13 people tore threw land at speeds of six km an hour, whereas fire fighters on the ground can respond to fires moving at 300m an hour. The European Union is ramping up the number of firefighting planes and helicopters sent to help tackle blazes raging in southwest France, the bloc’s crisis management chief told AFP. “We currently have nine aerial assets deployed on site, and tomorrow we will have 11, drawn from our European strategic reserve,” EU commissioner Hadja Lahbib said. Looks like president Emmanuel Macron will on Monday go to an area ravaged by a forest fire in southwest France to show support to firefighters and local officials. That’s what the Élysée Palace says, AFP is reporting. I will keep an eye on this for you. Environment editor Dr Theodore Keeping, an expert on the analysis of extreme weather and wildfires at Imperial College London, offered this take on the wildfires in Europe: “These fires in Spain and France are some of the most extreme we have seen in Europe, in their size, in rapidity of spread, and in the pyrocumulonimbus storms they have created. Whilst wildfires are affected by people, and need vegetation, the hot and dry summer weather we have seen is the key driver of this extreme behaviour. Consecutive windy, and very hot days mean that a fire will continue to grow faster and larger until it runs out of vegetation, and when this intensity increases to a very high level, we see the formation of pyrocumulonimbus systems which often strengthen and continue the winds driving the fire. Climate change is causing these conditions to become much more likely and more intense, which is why we are seeing much more extreme wildfires across Europe. “The impacts of these fires go beyond evacuations and destroyed property. From the science, we would expect major economic impacts due to the disruption, and wildfire smoke from major events is deadly. Estimates are for well over 100,000 excess deaths globally due to smoke exposure from wildfires.” Wildfires are once again affecting communities in France and Spain, with people forced to evacuate their homes, travel disrupted and smoke affecting air quality in many areas. We would like to hear from people who have been affected. Have you had to evacuate your home? How are you coping? Are you living with smoke, poor air quality or the threat of evacuation? Let us know. As France and Spain battle some of the worst wildfires in recent history, experts have warned of an unprecedented phenomenon that could exacerbate the effects of the blazes: pyrocumulonimbus, or “fire clouds”. Wildfires often spread when hot, windy and dry conditions coalesce but severe wildfires can generate their own unique weather systems. One of the most striking examples of this are pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or fire-generated thunderstorms, which are the most severe form of fire clouds. In a nutshell, pyrocumulonimbus, or “pyroCb” clouds, are gigantic storm clouds that are generated by a wildfire. Massive wildfires emit large amounts of energy and heat that rapidly rise in a smoke plume. When the fire plume rises high enough, low atmospheric pressure causes its air to cool, and the moisture condenses and forms a cloud. Such clouds can generate lightning strikes and windy conditions. If a wildfire is sufficiently large and intense, the smoke plume it generates can form a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, which can reach altitudes of 10–15km (six to nine miles) and penetrate the stratosphere. Nasa calls them the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”. “It’s a full thunderstorm forming within the fire plume,” says Rick McRae, an adjunct professor from the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) bushfire research group. “These things, they get up to roughly 10,000 cubic kilometres of the atmosphere, so they have a big impact.” Since Nuñez mentioned pyrocumulonimbus, or “fire clouds”, let’s get a bit more detail on what they actually are… Over in Paris, France’s interior minister Laurent Nuñez is just briefing the media on the latest on wildfires after a emergency meeting chaired by president Emmanuel Macron (10:38). He says this year’s wildfires are “completely exceptional,” with over 116,000 hectares of forest and vegetation burned since the beginning of the year, way above average, and far exceeding the 70,000 hectares reported in total last year. On the fire in Gironde, he says it is “stabilised” but “not contained,” and remains “very complicated to control,” with a number of “unprecedented” phenomena observed, including pyrocumulonimbus clouds, reported in France for the first time ever. Nuñez repeatedly thanks the emergency services for their work so far, but wearily warns that “the season is far from over.” On a more domestic point, he also is particularly annoyed by some “ridiculous” reporting criticising France’s aerial firefighting fleet, which he says is very diverse and well set to fight fires. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is speaking in Castellón, giving a news briefing after visiting a local forward command post. He warns against “lots of disinformation” and conspiracy theories spreading on social media about the causes of the fires. He speaks of the need for people to remain properly informed about the fires and their causes, and criticises those who are using social media to pump out hoaxes and fake news. Over recent days, false stories have circulated on social media, claiming the fires have been intentionally started in order to clear the ground for new solar panel installations or to explore new areas for mining. “Sadly, we’re seeing a lot of fake news during this emergency,” says Sánchez. “And all that does is create more worries and more anxiety for people.” Sánchez clearly attributes the blazes to a “climate emergency” as per comments made earlier this morning (10:05). He adds that the government will adopt new measures intended to help people affected by the fires, working alongside local authorities to “begin assessing the magnitude of the damages” caused. But looking ahead, he says that while the government will support recovery efforts, it needs to step up preparedness for similar incidents in the future. Pointing to the risks associated with a new heatwave expected later this week, he asks citizens to “exercise extreme caution,” and follow instructions from local authorities. Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, warned earlier today that starting tomorrow, “a sharp rise in temperatures will push the danger to very high/extreme levels across most of the country.” in Rome Over in Italy, as firefighters fought on Monday to extinguish a devastating wildfire in the southern region of Puglia, forcing the evacuation by sea of hundreds of people, a further 58 were evacuated from their homes in Maratea as a wildfire swept through neighbouring Basilicata. More than 400 people, many of them tourists staying in campsites set among pine forests, were evacuated by sea in Puglia’s Gargano peninsula on Sunday as the blaze, fanned by strong winds, encroached beaches. In Maratea, Canadair firefighting planes are battling to contain a wildfire in the mountains overlooking the town. There was a huge fire in the outskirts of Rome on Sunday, stalling traffic, while trains in the Molise region have been disrupted due to wildfires there. More than half of wildfires in Italy are caused by arsonists, according to the most recent figures from Ispra, the Italian institute for environmental protection and research. In 2025, 123 km2 of forest area across the country was destroyed by wildfires – the equivalent of 135,000 football pitches. Officials in Calabria last week said arsonists were using cats to spread wildfires there by wrapping them with rags soaked in flammable liquid and setting them alight, sparking widespread condemnation from animal rights’ groups. Italy is bracing itself for the fourth intense heatwave so far this year as temperatures edge up towards highs of 38-40C from Wednesday. Meanwhile, Météo-France has just confirmed its weather forecast for this week, with temperatures expected to return to mid- to high 30s on Tuesday, and peak near 40C in the southwest of France on Wednesday. It will be the fourth extreme heatwave of the summer, the service said. Over in Spain, Francisco Martín, the central government’s representative in the Madrid region, has just told a media briefing that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the ongoing operation, but warned that the fire still remained out of control. “We must seize this window of opportunity. We will defeat this fire.” But he also repeated his call for residents to follow instructions from local authorities to protect themselves from further fires. Similar concerns about the impact a returning heatwave could have on firefighting operations were echoed in France. Lt Col David Annotel told RTL Radio this morning that the fire in Gironde could last “several weeks or months” before it is fully extinguished, with reinforcements expected to be needed from across the country. Echoing comments made in Spain, he said the next two to three days offer a chance to “take advantage” of the weather conditions before the heatwave makes the situation more difficult to manage again. He said it took months to extinguish a much smaller fire in Landiras in 2022, and he expected the same pattern to repeat happen here. Spanish interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that Spain faces two “decisive” days to contain wildfires before the new heatwave hits the country, making the emergency response even trickier. He said that around 3,000 emergency workers were in the area battling the blaze. Provisional data on wildfires in Spain shows that more than 170,000 hectares of forest land have been affected since the beginning of the year – a nearly sixfold increase on the almost 29,000 recorded in the same period in 2025. 35 major fires have been recorded so far, up from just 11 last year. Brendan Wood for MetDesk A combination of an unusually wet winter, very low rainfall since spring and repeated record-breaking summer heatwaves is likely to explain why wildfires have ignited, spread and resisted control so readily across France and Spain in recent days. About 90% of wildfires are started by human activity, typically igniting “fine fuels” such as vegetation grass, pine needles, litter and twigs. And recent weather has almost certainly made ignition far easier. Drought in western Europe has turned this vegetation – which normally dries after only a few hours of heat and low rainfall – into tinder. Fine fuel moisture code values climbed above the 96th percentile this month, while France and Spain’s eighth-wettest winters on record left an abundance of fine fuel ready to burn. Once established, fires can spread into heavier fuels including shrubs, roots and deeper litter if conditions are dry enough. These materials burn hotter and for longer, can smoulder long after flames appear to have extinguished and generate towering columns of superheated air capable of carrying embers far beyond the blaze. Heavier fuels also take much longer to dry than fine fuel, but this year’s prolonged dry spell and three record-breaking heatwaves have allowed them to dry substantially. Winds may have also made the fires harder to predict. France’s largest blaze, in Gironde, initially spread westwards towards the coast on an easterly breeze before winds abruptly turned westerly on Friday, driving the fire back towards Bordeaux. Fires of this scale can also generate their own strong, gusty winds, creating unpredictable behaviour that complicates firefighting efforts. Showers and thunderstorms near the largest fires in France and Spain brought little rainfall on Saturday and may instead have made conditions worse. Rain evaporating beneath a storm cloud cools the air, making it denser, so that it rapidly sinks to the ground before spreading in all directions. These downdrafts can fuel sudden, erratic fire behaviour. Cloud-to-ground lightning without accompanying rainfall can also ignite new fires. With increasingly high pressure expected to delay any meaningful – albeit unevenly distributed – rain until the end of the week, while increasing the likelihood of a fourth summer heatwave across much of Europe, the threat of further large wildfires is likely to persist into August. Over in Paris, French president Emmanuel Macron is now chairing an emergency meeting on wildfires in the country, flanked by prime minister Sébastien Lecornu and interior minister Laurent Nuñez, who has been at the frontline of the state response over the weekend. We are expecting hear from Nuñez later this morning – I will bring you the lines here. European Commission vice-president Teresa Ribera warned that Europe is not prepared for the consequences of climate change and said it would need to move faster to adapt to the climate emergency. Ribera, a former minister in Sanchez’s government in Spain, told El País that recent rail and electricity disruptions and pressures on health systems across the continent showed that Europe still needs to do more to prepare for what’s coming in the future. She said the European Commission was working towards a plan on climate change adaptation, to be approved in October, with a “more comprehensive and far-reaching update” of measures taken so far. Ribera said that “given Europe is warming faster than the average for all continents,” it needs to do more – and faster – to prepare for extreme weather events, like wildfires or floods, like in Valencia in October 2024. Authorities in Madrid said the spread of the fire overnight “slowed down” and “allowed firefighters to act on them,” but it remains “active and uncontrolled.” “Three fronts have been identified, with the most active one located north of the San Juan Reservoir. Citizens are urged to continue exercising extreme caution and to stay informed about the situation’s evolution through official sources.” in Bordeaux France is facing “a race against time” to control wildfires before heatwave temperatures soar again this week, said Eric Brocardi, a fire service spokesperson. Weather forecasters have warned that another heatwave could hit France from Tuesday, with temperatures reaching 40C in some areas. This would complicate efforts to control the wildfire in Gironde, south-western France, which the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez described as “extremely intense and unpredictable... generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area.” The Gironde fire has so far burned 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris and one of the biggest devastations of land since the second world war. Smoke from the fires is continuing to cause a “marked deterioration” in air quality across a swathe of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and beyond, with health authorities issuing warnings about the danger. Elderly people, pregnant women and those with respiratory issues and chronic conditions were advised to take precautions. Local health authorities said people should close windows, wear an FFP2 mask outside and avoid strenuous activity. The prime minister’s office said more than 1.5 million FFP2 masks had been sent to the region. A total of 220,000 people and 13,000 businesses have been evacuated in Gironde. In the last few minutes, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said that “the full power of the state” will support all people affected by the wildfires near Madrid. Speaking at a climate conference in Madrid, Sánchez said: “What we are living through is not a series of isolated incidents. It is … the most painful manifestation of a climate emergency that is making … wildfires more voracious and heatwaves more frequent, and, as a result, our land more vulnerable. It is no longer an exception. It is the rule.” He warned that “climate emergency kills,” and said the government needed to “tackle the root causes” and “anticipate the impacts” better, accelerating its work on energy transition. “We have made progress, unquestionably, but it is obvious that we must redouble our efforts, because scientific forecasts are being surpassed year after year,” he warned. Firefighters ⁠battled throughout the night ⁠and into Monday morning to tackle huge wildfires threatening the French city of Bordeaux, Reuters reported. “This ‌is a fire of a size never seen before,” said ‌Jérôme Steffe, mayor of Cestas, on Monday. Cestas is one of the suburbs that lies just outside the main Bordeaux city area and from where thousands have had to be evacuated from homes and holiday residences. The blazes, which broke out ‌last week near the Atlantic coast, are now 15 km (10 miles) away from entry points to the main metropolitan area of Bordeaux. So far in July, ‌high temperatures have averaged 32.2 degrees Celsius in the Aquitaine region, which is 7.3C above the month’s normal high between 1961 and 1990, according to Reuters Climate Monitor. Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, Sam Jones in Madrid and Jennifer Rankin Wildfires have forced about 375,000 people to flee their homes in France and Spain. In France nearly 260,000 have been forced to flee, while in neighbouring Spain 116,000 have been evacuated this week. Bordeaux’s mayor, Thomas Cazenave, described the Gironde blaze in France as being “at the gates of the metropolitan area”, between 15 and 20 miles (25-30km) from the city itself, which has a population of 268,000. An evacuation of the city was not on the cards, he said. The fire situation in Gironde remained “broadly stable overnight” with no major developments, the local authority said on Monday. “Security and emergency services remain fully mobilised and are continuing their operations on the ground,” the statement said. Authorities in Spain said major areas of fire near Madrid had been contained and cooled down, according to a senior officer with Spain’s military emergencies unit. “We’re facing some difficult hours, although it’s true that the latest update has shown that last night was very positive in terms of the fire’s evolution and efforts to control it,” prime minister Pedro Sánchez said. The EU commissioner for crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told the BBC it was likely that damage from wildfires would exceed previous records. “Last year, one million hectares burned during the summer and so we are expecting to face another historic, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year,” she said. French president Emmanuel Macron is about to chair a crisis meeting on major wildfires that have seen over 250,000 flee their homes after another challenging night in the Gironde region. Local authorities said the situation was “globally stable” overnight in a marked improvement on previous nights, but the situation on the ground remained difficult. We are expecting to hear from France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, after this morning’s meetings and I will bring you his comments here. Over in Spain, some progress was reported with plans to allow some of the 116,0000 people evacuated to gradually return home near Madrid. But the country’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez spoke on Sunday night of “difficult hours” still ahead, with some concern that strong winds could complicate the response on Monday. I will bring you all the latest throughout the day as we will track the situation in both countries. Separately, I will also keep an eye on Germany and the aftermath of the Islamist terrorist attack on a pride event on Saturday, with chancellor Friedrich Merz facing tricky questions on reports that the suspect had been convicted in Germany of “preparing a serious act of subversive violence,” but his sentence was suspended. I will also keep an eye on Iceland, as PM Kristrún Frostadóttir is in Berlin today, just over a month before her high-stakes referendum on reopening EU accession talks. Finally, there will also be updates from Romania, which saw three drone incursions over the weekend and its air forces shot down all three. Lots of ground for us to cover. I will bring you all the updates here. It’s Monday, 27 July 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live. Good morning."},"isHosted":false,"pillarId":"pillar/news","pillarName":"News"}}}