Smoke from a huge forest fire in central Portugal on Tuesday engulfed the skyscrapers known as the Four Towers in Madrid, 400 km away, and residents of the Spanish capital complained of a strong smell of burning, Reuters reported. The authorities had to explain to concerned residents that there was no fire in the area.

Smoke from a large fire in Portugal reached Madrid, which is 400 km awayPhoto: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP / Profimedia

On Tuesday morning, several residents of Madrid reported the smell of burning and smoke to the single emergency number 112.

The fire that ravaged Portugal’s Serra da Estrela National Park began on August 6 and was largely contained on Sunday, but flared up again on Monday, prompting the evacuation of several villages.

More than 1,100 firefighters, supported by 13 water bombers, battled the blaze, which has already burned more than 17,000 hectares.

Images from NASA’s Worldview satellite showed a column of smoke stretching from the west of the Iberian Peninsula to its eastern half and beyond Madrid, where emergency services had to explain to worried residents that there was no fire nearby.

In eastern Spain, however, hundreds of firefighters worked around the clock to tackle two wildfires in the Valencia region.

In the Val d’Ebo region, south of Valencia, roads have been closed and around 2,000 people have been evacuated since Sunday after a lightning strike sparked the fire, which has since burned more than 9,500 hectares.

The driest summer on the Iberian Peninsula

Climate change has made part of the peninsula the driest in 1,200 years, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Geoscience.

July was the hottest month on record in Spain since at least 1961, when the Spanish Meteorological Service began recording data.

According to the European Forest Fire Information System, wildfires have burned more than 270,000 hectares in Spain since the start of the year, well above the annual average of 70,000 hectares over the past 15 years.

In Portugal, forest fires have destroyed approximately 85,000 hectares, or almost 1% of the country’s territory, the highest percentage in the European Union.