The fires have ravaged small, sparsely populated towns in the country's northwest, forcing locals in many cases to act as firefighters. About 2,382 square miles have burned across Spain and Portugal.

A heatwave is continuing to affect the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of firefighters have been deployed to battle ongoing blazes and towns have been evacuated. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited affected regions to meet with the heads of emergency teams.

Spain has sent 500 more troops to fight raging wildfires, bringing the total deployed to 1,900, as the death toll from the blazes has risen to four. On Sunday, a firefighter died after an accident during firefighting efforts when his truck fell down a steep hill,

The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London.

Wildfires have ravaged more than 450,000 hectares of land across the Iberian peninsula since the start of the year, setting records in a region particularly hard hit by intensive heatwaves and drought affecting southern Europe.

Firefighters have been battling to put out blazes across southern Europe in one of the worst summers for wildfires in 20 years

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