Spain Warns Strong Winds Could Worsen Wildfire

Spanish firefighters hoped to get control of wildfires raging near Madrid on Saturday but an official warned that erratic winds threatened to fan the blazes further.

The fires in the parched countryside have forced 63,000 people to flee their homes or remain indoors, the interior ministry said, in what officials have called the region's worst fire on record.

Thick grey smoke filled the sky west of the capital and the smell of burning reached the streets of central Madrid.

With temperatures dipping, "there is a real opportunity now to tackle this fire with some guarantee of success," the central government's delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martin, told reporters late Friday.

On Friday, "the temperature has dropped, the wind has eased and the relative humidity has risen," he said.

But he warned that Saturday would be "difficult" as "the wind is expected to rise in the morning, with rather erratic gusts".

The Madrid regional government's emergency management chief Carlos Novillo had told reporters earlier Friday that the fire was "at its peak and... currently beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain".

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 was scheduled to attend an emergency planning meeting on Saturday morning in Cenicientos, a village at the heart of the fire zone, and speak to the media afterwards.