France has appealed for international help, while Spain has declared a national emergency.

More than 250,000 people have been forced from their homes and holiday resorts in the face of massive, uncontained wildfires in France and Spain.

Spanish firefighters hoped to get control of wildfires raging near capital Madrid on Saturday, but an official warned that erratic winds threatened to fan the blazes further, as thick grey smoke filled the sky west of the city.

• list 1 of 4Spanish police accuse tractor driver of sparking wildfire as blazes spread
• list 2 of 4Wildfire survivors tell of narrow escape as Spain declares emergency
• list 3 of 4Wildfires force evacuation of tens of thousands in France and Spain
• list 4 of 4Thousands forced to evacuate as wildfires sweep across southern France

Carlos Novillo, the Madrid regional government’s emergency management chief, said the wildfire near the capital was “at its peak and is currently beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain”.

Spain’s interior ministry said the flames have ravaged nearly 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) in the Madrid region and “between 13,000 and 15,000 hectares” in the neighbouring province of Avila. The total is more than twice the surface area of the French capital, Paris.

The ministry added that a total of 70,000 people had been evacuated.

Two separate wildfires combined on Friday to become one huge blaze, which was close to merging with yet another in the neighbouring Castilla y Leon region.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday the priority in tackling the wildfires was to “save lives”, warning that a “complex” fight lay ahead.

“Our priority, our thinking, our aim is for your lives, to save your lives and protect inhabited areas,” Sanchez told reporters after attending an emergency planning meeting in Cenicientos, a village at the heart of the fire zone.

“We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be.”

In France, authorities on Saturday evacuated thousands of people ⁠from suburbs ⁠near Bordeaux as wildfires in areas around the city showed no ⁠signs of abating.

Sophie Brocas, who heads the local administration of La Nouvelle-Aquitaine et ⁠de la Gironde, which covers the Bordeaux region, said the areas of Le Haillan, Eysines and Merignac were being cleared out.

The Bordeaux region is famed for its vineyards and the ‌city is one of the main transport hubs for tourists visiting nearby holiday resorts on the Atlantic coast.

Around 44,000 people fled the upmarket Cap Ferret peninsula south of Bordeaux, with the only road threatened by flames.

Boats moved hundreds of people away from the fires, while others drove off the peninsula, known for its millionaire residences. More than 50 houses there have been destroyed.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said 197,000 people had so far been evacuated from the Gironde and Landes regions.

“The fires which ⁠are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before,” Lecornu wrote on X ⁠on Saturday.

The French army has also been drafted in ⁠to help, while Macron has asked the European Union for help. He also ordered the army to deploy a military transport aircraft to help with its wildfire suppression operations.

Around 100 Paris firefighters have also been deployed to help, Arnaud de Cacqueray, commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, told the AFP news agency.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the wildfires across France have burned nearly 98,000 hectares, describing it as a “historic record”.

“There are still a number of fires across the country that have not yet been brought under control,” he said.

Some European regions have suffered at least two heatwaves since May. And drought blamed on human-fuelled climate change has heightened the threat from wildfires this year, the World Weather Attribution group said in a study published this week.