Spain spent 28.3 million euros on wildfire prevention in 2024, far below the 2009 peak, as a mega-fire burns 74,000 hectares

Spending on prevention still below pre-crisis levels

Central government expenditure on wildfire prevention reached 28.3 million euros in 2024, according to the latest edition of the Forest Sector Investment and Employment Study published by the Ministry for Ecological Transition. That figure is less than half the 72.5 million euros allocated in 2009, the year before a drastic cut that brought the budget down to 11.6 million by 2011. Under Mariano Rajoy, annual spending fluctuated between 11.4 and 17.6 million euros. When Pedro Sánchez took office in 2018, the allocation stood at 13 million euros and has since grown by 117.7 percent, yet it remains far below the pre-austerity peak. The absence of approved state budgets in 2025 and 2026 suggests no substantial increase has occurred.

The 2026 fire season

By the end of July 2026, 176,000 hectares had burned across Spain, five times the total recorded for the whole of 2025. The most devastating event was a mega-fire spanning the provinces of Ávila, Madrid and Toledo, which alone affected more than 74,000 hectares and prompted the evacuation of over 100,000 people. Authorities declared a national emergency and described the blaze as "outside extinction capacity", meaning that available technical and human resources were insufficient to stop it. Earlier in the summer, a fire in Los Gallardos, Almería, had already claimed lives.

Expert calls for long-term forest management

Ana Belén Noriega, president of the College of Forestry Technical Engineers, stressed that reactive measures are not enough. She noted that 56 percent of Spain's territory is forest land and that active, science-based management is essential to adapt ecosystems to a climate that is warming faster in Europe than anticipated.

The consequences of what we do now we will see in 20 years, so we have to start as soon as possible.

Noriega explained that reducing the amount of combustible material is critical so that firefighting crews can face the flames without risking their lives to the same degree. She also pointed to the need for a common strategy that transcends the short-term cycles of four-year governments.

Causes and structural weaknesses

Multiple analyses point to a combination of human action, rural abandonment and insufficient prevention. The 2003 Forest Law requires landowners and municipalities to clear forested areas and mandates regional governments to enforce compliance, but implementation is widely regarded as lax. Decades of rural depopulation, the decline of extensive livestock farming and the expansion of monoculture plantations of pine and eucalyptus have increased fuel loads. While climate change intensifies heatwaves and drought, experts and commentators argue that it does not replace the need for clearing undergrowth, maintaining firebreaks or keeping forest roads accessible.

Political response and disinformation

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited affected zones and held coordination meetings, a visible engagement that contrasted with earlier crises. Critics noted that the official narrative centred on climate change while sidelining the accumulated failures in forest management and prevention funding. Meanwhile, social media circulated false claims that fires were being set deliberately to clear land for solar panels or wind turbines, a narrative debunked by fact-checkers who pointed to the existing legal framework that would block such land-use changes.