Europe wildfires: ‘Difficult hours lie ahead’ in battle to contain fires, says Pedro Sánchez as more than 300,000 flee homes in France and Spain – as it happened

Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes due to the risks posed by the wildfires in France and Spain.

Nearly 260,000 people have been evacuated across France as a whole, while in Spain more than 90,000 were evacuated from regions around Madrid and Ávila.

In positive developments this morning, fires west of Madrid were reportedly being brought under control, although the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, later spoke of “difficult hours” ahead.

Sánchez also said there needed to be “a major public pact on the climate emergency” going forward.

However, a new front opened up overnight near the Spanish coastal city of Valencia, where at least 15,000 people were evacuated.

In France, which has been worst affected, authorities are battling to contain a huge wildfire near Bordeaux that has consumed an area of land four times the size of Paris, as my colleagues note in this story.

About 55,000 people were ordered to leave villages around Bordeaux, in the Gironde region in the south-west of the country, overnight.

Bordeaux’s mayor, Thomas Cazenave, described the Gironde blaze as being “at the gates of the metropolitan area”, between 15 and 20 miles (25 and 30km) from the city itself.

A Bordeaux city council spokesperson said earlier that a total evacuation of the city was being considered but the mayor subsequently downplayed this possibility.

At least 240 homes in Gironde have been totally destroyed by the wildfire which is still raging in south-west France.