Southern Europe’s wildfires intensify amid a searing heatwave and major religious holidays.Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece are battling fierce wildfires as scorching, dry, intense heat fuels blazes across the region, coinciding with major religious holidays, as global warming leaves its mark on Europe.Spain faced 14 major fires on Friday, said Virginia Barcones, the emergency services chief, as temperatures were forecast to rise further over the weekend.“Today will once again be a very tough day with an extreme risk of new fires,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned on Friday.The State Meteorological Agency placed most of the country under extreme fire danger alerts, particularly in the north and west, where the largest blazes raged. The current heatwave, with temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on several days this month, is expected to linger until Monday.In Galicia, fires shut down several highways and halted high-speed rail services to Madrid. The EU’s European Forest Fire Information System reported that wildfires in Spain this year have already burned 158,000 hectares (390,000 acres), an area the size of metropolitan London.Friday marked the Feast of the Assumption in Spain and Portugal, a major Catholic holiday usually observed with family gatherings and processions.The fires raging across Portugal caused a first fatality Friday, when the former mayor of the eastern town of Planta died fighting fires there, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced.The president offered “heartfelt condolences to the mayor of Guarda for the death of former mayor Carlos …
