Mircea Spiridon was driving home on the outskirts of Tres Cantos in the countryside north of Madrid when he saw the flames.
A wildfire, fuelled by what has come to be known in Spain as the deadly “rule of 30” – temperatures above 30 degrees, relative humidity below 30, and winds of over 30km an hour – had sprung up to sweep across 6km in just 40 minutes.
Fond of animals, the 50-year-old mechanic realised the flames were encroaching on a farm that was well known locally as a place where people stabled their horses.
“He called me and told me there was a fire on the farm. He said: ‘I’m going there, everything’s burning’,” Spiridon’s wife Elena told Spanish newspaper El País.
READ MORE
She heard the sound of commotion and people calling to free the horses. Then, nothing more.
Across the Mediterranean, drier summers and hotter temperatures are driving wildfires of a ferocity that firefighters struggle to contain.
The inferno in Tres Cantos was just one of 14 major fires that Spain battled simultaneously this week, ranging from its southern tip to its most temperate northern regions.
This year fire has consumed nearly 440,000 hectares of land in the euro zone, according to calculations by the EU Science Hub; on average, the amount of land burnt up in the same period of the year is half that.
In Spain, 115,000 hectares was consumed in just the past few days. Several blazes converged into one huge fire in the region of Galicia, cutting off roads and the region’s rail connection to Madrid. The fires forced the evacuation of more than 8,000 people from their homes.
[ Spain struggles to contain spate of record-breaking wildfiresOpens in new window ]
Conditions have been worsened by a brutal heatwave that is forecast to persist through this weekend.
“There is no precedent for a period between August 1st and 20th as warm as that of 2025,” national weather agency Aemet said in a statement. On Tuesday, 65 Spanish weather stations registered temperatures of 42 degrees or more.
For the first time, the country activated the European Union’s disaster assistance system to appeal for help; France sent two water bombing aircraft in response.
It was the fifth European country to do so in one week. In Greece, where 152 fires broke out in 48 hours, 5,000 firefighters were mobilised to try to contain infernos that forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists.
The map of major wildfires across Europe in the last 24 hours shows a constellation of infernos from Portugal to Turkey, a pattern that has become an annual event that consumes wilderness, destroys homes, forces thousands to evacuate and claims lives.
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre notes scientific research suggests that “forest fire damage is likely to increase in the future due to climate change”.
In a video recorded as firefighters struggled to contain the spreading flames at Tres Cantos this week, Madrid regional minister Carlos Novillo Piris said the wildfire had been driven by a “dry storm”.
“This fire was explosive,” he said. “It spread at a speed we have never seen before.”
When nothing was heard from Spiridon after his fateful decision to try to save the horses, family friends went to search for him. They found him badly burned and suffering from smoke inhalation.
[ In pictures: Europe’s wildfires spread close to southern capitalsOpens in new window ]
The farm’s 83-year-old owner was taken to hospital with a chest injury and is reported to be doing well.
Spiridon survived to speak to his wife once more by phone to tell her he loved her and that he wasn’t sure he would make it. She would have to raise their two teenage sons alone.
Photographs published in the Spanish press record the terrible aftermath. The scorched countryside, and the snarl of the collapsed corrugated stable roof, heaped around the remains of horses, charred to the bone.
Spiridon was one of three people to die in Spain’s wildfires this week, each of them ordinary people who saw the flames and rushed to help.
Abel Ramos Falagán (35) from a village of 200 people in Spain’s northwestern region of Castile and León, ran a small construction company and offered his brush cutters to the firefighting efforts when a blaze began to threaten the nearby countryside.
He was working to create a firebreak with his friend and fellow member of a local motorcycle club, 37-year-old Jaime Aparicio, when the wildfire developed into two fronts that trapped them on either side. Neither survived.
[ Wildfires fanned by heatwave and strong winds rage across EuropeOpens in new window ]
The three volunteer firefighters are being remembered in Spain as good people who died trying to help others.
The story of Spiridon, who emigrated to Spain from Romania in 2007 in search of a better life, is striking a particular resonance at a time of prevalent anti-immigration sentiment in Spanish politics.
“In the midst of chaos and confusion, Mircea didn’t think of himself: he ran to try to safe the horses,” Tres Campos resident Maria Requejo wrote on a fundraising page she set up to raise money to help Spiridon’s family repatriate him to be buried in his native Romania, where his mother still lives.
“Heroes deserve to be remembered.”
