Bordeaux (AFP) - France fought an “unpredictable” wildfire close to Bordeaux on Sunday and Spain warned of “difficult hours” ahead in its own fiery battle, with more than 325,000 people ecacuated in both countries.

The forest infernos, raging for days in France’s southwest and central Spain near Madrid, rank among the worst either nation has seen in peacetime.

France’s major fire has caused an unprecedented “pyrocumulonimbus” – a gigantic fire cloud that creates its own winds and packs lightning that causes more blazes, said the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).

“It’s a David-versus-Goliath scenario… at some point, we’ll find a weak spot and strike there,” said FNSPF spokesman Eric Brocardi.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called a Monday morning crisis cabinet meeting to discuss the emergency, his office said.

Spanish officials voiced optimism they were starting to get a grip on some fires – though a new blaze near the eastern coastal city of Valencia forced 15,000 people to flee over the weekend.

“Difficult hours lie ahead,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said as he visited the fire zone in Avila province west of Madrid Sunday. He is due to visit affected areas in Valencia on Monday.

A cabinet member said the fire around Avila was the largest in Spain’s history, while civil protection chief Virginia Barcones said the country was battling a “monster”.

“We are dealing with a perimeter of 280 kilometres encompassing 77,000 hectares,” Barcones told state broadcaster TVE of the wildfire.

Other EU countries have sent aircraft, crews and vehicles to help both countries.

- ‘Extremely intense’ fire -

“When we flew into Madrid we could see the fire very close to the airport,” said Pilar, a 69-year-old New Zealand tourist who declined to give her last name.

Letisha Lucas, a 33-year-old tourist from Canada said the smoke smell was obvious on arrival in Madrid, irritating her throat.

Scientists say climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and intense.

Coming at the height of the summer holiday season, the fires were fuelled by woodland parched to tinder by successive heatwaves and lack of rain since May.

In France, the prefect of the southwestern Gironde region where the country’s fires are concentrated urged tourists to stay away and seek “alternative destinations”.

Garden hose in hand, Georges Clivaz sprayed water along a road leading to his property in Saint-Jean-d’Illac as the blaze burned a few kilometres away.

“We’re doing this to slow down the fire’s advance; we want to save our homes,” he told AFP.

Although the village was evacuated on Friday, Clivaz said he and his family were trying to hold out.

“But the firefighters are telling us that in two or three hours the fire will be here.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned “the situation remains very unfavourable” across France, where more than 250,000 people had been evacuated.

The main fire in Gironde, home to Bordeaux, was “extremely intense and unpredictable… generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area”, he said on X.

Weather forecasters warn another heatwave could hit France from Tuesday, with temperatures reaching 40C in some areas.

At least 240 homes have been destroyed in Gironde region, many of them in village Le Porge.

But Bordeaux mayor Thomas Cazenave said there were no plans to evacuate the city’s urban area, home to 850,000 people and sheltering thousands displaced by the fires. Local officials remained “vigilant”, he added.

France’s defence ministry said it has taken special steps to protect industrial sites around Bordeaux, a key centre of the country’s aerospace industry.

The main freeway south of Bordeaux and rail services have been cut.

Some 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel and around 1,200 police have been deployed to the Gironde region.

- ‘Incalculable’ damage -

King Felipe VI, visiting an emergency shelter on Madrid’s western outskirts, said the wildfires had caused “incalculable” damage to Spain’s natural heritage.

Around 75,000 residents have been evacuated from the Madrid region, Avila, Toledo and from the eastern region of Castellon in Valencia.

Olga Congacha, 50, who fled her village of Robledo de Chavela west of Madrid carrying only documents and clothes, told AFP she felt “panicked” when told to leave her home.

“I didn’t know whether to cry or what. It was a moment when you feel awful,” she said.

Allowed a brief visit home Sunday to collect medicine, she found her house covered in ash and the streets deserted, she added.

Officials said winds were pushing wildfires near Madrid to the south, away from the capital for now, but forcing more evacuations of villages in their path.

Hundreds of kilometres away, the new Valencia fire was proving “very intense”, Pilar Bernabe, the central government delegate to Valencia, wrote on X.

One person was killed on Saturday in a separate, smaller fire near Valencia, the only civilian death so far reported in the wildfires. In France, two firefighters were killed near Bordeaux on Tuesday.

Pope Leo IV, in his prayers on Sunday, expressed solidarity with all those affected by the “devastating” Spanish and French fires and called on people to pray for them and first responders.

Italy, too, was facing its own fires.

More than 400 tourists and beachgoers were evacuated by sea near the town of Peschici in the southern Puglia region, with 300 more expected to be rescued, said the coastguard.

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