The Government will declare as catastrophic the areas of the great fires

• Direct witness The hard return home among ashes: "I just want to cry"

• Fires The Bejís fire is stabilized and the return of the evacuated neighbors has occurred with "absolute normality"

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced during his visit to the municipalities affected by the forest fire that has devastated more than

, that they are going to declare the affected area a

.

A declaration that will be extended to all the areas affected by the fire in Spain, which have affected more than 223,00 hectares so far this year and have left more than 270,000 people evicted

Sánchez has assured before the "desolate landscape" in

(

) that "we lose belongings but we have managed to avoid human losses" and has advanced that tomorrow's council of ministers will declare the area affected by a

emergency .

To know more

Graphics.

Why does Spain suffer the worst fires of the century?

• Writing: TERESA GUERREROMadrid

• Writing: EMILIO AMADE

• Writing: ALBERTO HERNÁNDEZ

Why does Spain suffer the worst fires of the century?

Together with the President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, he has also alluded to the train accident that "is being investigated" and that the Government of Spain will act with "responsibility and transparency".

The fire destroys four times the area of ​​the average for the decade

Forest fires have devastated 60,518 hectares in the week of August 7 to 14, 2022, so the number of devastated hectares stands at

, according to data from the

(

) consulted by Europa Press.

This figure represents almost four times more than the average number of hectares burned in the last decade (57,746 hectares).

These figures do not yet include the area burned by some of the large fires registered in recent days, such as the one in

(

) -which has burned nearly 20,000 hectares- or the one in

(

), which is under control after burn some 12,150 hectares of land in a 100-kilometer perimeter.

For its part, the data from

(

) as of August 22, from

the

program , consulted by Europa Press, place the hectares burned in Spain at

, for which the country is places it at the head of the EU countries with the most area burned this summer.

MITECO statistics reflect that, until August 14 of this year, 229,256.97 hectares have burned compared to 46,468.94 hectares in the same period of 2021. This is the highest figure in the last decade, a record that by now it held 2012 with 166,185.66 hectares burned at the same time of year.

The year 2018, with 17,929.67 hectares devastated, is the year with the lowest burned area of ​​the decade in the same period.

In addition, so far this year, the firefighting services have already had to work on

(exceeding 500 hectares), a figure that exceeds the 30 large fires registered in 2012. Once again, 2018 was the year more 'benevolent' in this sense, since there were three major fires.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Fires

• Castellon

• Pedro Sanchez