This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 26 July, shows a zoomed-in view of the Cebreros ground station, west of Madrid, Spain.

The area around the town of Ávila, about 100 km northwest of the Spanish capital, was one of the worst affected areas during the outbreak of fire in Spain. More than 90 000 people were evacuated from the region over the weekend.

The European Union’s Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated on 23 July to monitor and provide emergency mapping data on the wildfires in central Spain.

Also within the affected area, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Cebreros ground station, 77 km west of Madrid, hosts a 35-metre antenna and provides routine operational support to ESA deep-space missions, such as Mars Express, Gaia, BepiColombo, Solar Orbiter, Juice and Euclid. It also supports missions for other space agencies under resource-sharing agreements. As of the morning of 27 July, ESA reviewed the situation at the Cebreros station and declared it safe for nominal operations.

This Sentinel-2 image uses true colour overlaid with false colour to highlight the active fire fronts. Each of the Sentinel-2 satellites carry an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands for a detailed view of land and vegetation.

A wider view of the area affected by the wildfires was also captured by Sentinel-2 on the same day.

Read here for more Earth observation images showing the effects of extreme heat in 2026: Wildfires, drought and extreme heat, 2026