Air quality deteriorated across large parts of Spain over the past week as a result of the wildfires, data from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency showed. Smoke from the Iberian Peninsula fires reached France, the UK, and Scandinavia, it said.

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

Spain tackled several major wildfires on Tuesday in one of the country's most destructive fire seasons in recent decades, despite temperatures dropping across the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of firefighters aided by soldiers and water-bombing aircraft continued to fight fires tearing through parched woodland that were especially severe in northwestern Spain,