OVIEDO, Spain.
As firefighters battled to put out a “complex” wildfire, about 300 people were evacuated from five cities in the Spanish city of Ectramadura on Monday.
Local authorities have asked the Spanish military for help in extinguishing the rapid fire in the mountainous region of Las Huddes.
Images from the scene show flames at a distance of meters from homes.
About 170 firefighters are trying to contain the blaze, which is said to be caused by lightning and dry conditions.
Temperatures in Spain are already hot and dry, but Mercury is set to rise even more from Tuesday to Friday.
Most parts of the country, including Extremadura, are at high risk of wildfires.
On Monday, neighboring Portugal was hit by a devastating fire, the highest in 42 years, according to climate researcher Carlos da Camara.
During the first wave of heatwaves on the Iberian Peninsula in June, wildfires also broke out in different parts of the country.
One of Castil & Lyon’s 25,216 hectares (62,310 hectares) of wildfires and forests ended in the region’s largest wildfire.
This year, large areas of Spain and Portugal are battling drought.
A recent study in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that climate change has drained much of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Spain and Portugal, over the past 1,200 years.
Scientists believe that this is due to the fact that Azores Hai, a semi-permanent center of atmospheric pressure in the Atlantic Ocean, serves as a “gateway” for rain in Europe, as the planet warms up.
The study, along with the dry conditions in the Iberian Peninsula, is linked to the fact that the Azores High Hail rain, which is most common in industrial times, is moving northward into the United Kingdom.
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