The second heat wave of this year in Spain has been going on for almost a week. Temperatures have been measured to almost 46 degrees in recent days. The dead are mainly elderly people who were already weakened by diseases and for whom the high temperatures were too much. More than 700 people died during the first heat wave in June. That series of extremely hot days came unusually early.
Due to the heat, a large forest fire broke out on Thursday north of the Spanish tourist attraction Mijas. More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from the area, according to regional emergency services. Many of them are housed in a sports center. Several forest fires also broke out in the Extremadura region, near the border with Portugal.
In Portugal itself, thousands of hectares of forest were also burned down last week. The forest fires are raging in the northern Aveiro, the centrally located Leiria, the southern Faro (Algarve) and in Setubal, 50 kilometers south of the capital Lisbon.
In addition, at least 238 people died in the country between 7 and 13 July as a result of the heat wave. In recent days, temperatures of around 40 degrees have been reached in a large part of Portugal. By Saturday, the temperature had dropped slightly in most places in the country.