Air quality deteriorated across large parts of Spain over the past week as a result of the wildfires, data from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency showed. Smoke from the Iberian Peninsula fires reached France, the UK, and Scandinavia, it said.

Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.

More than 343,000 hectares of land – the equivalent of nearly half a million football pitches – destroyed this year in Spain, in new record.