Southern Spain is burning again and this time the army has been called in.

Hundreds of families have been forced to flee as a massive wildfire rip through Huelva province, with terrifying footage showing just how close it came to wiping whole communities off the map.

Footage released on Monday and obtained by shows crews from Spain’s Military Emergency Unit, the UME, right in the thick of it in Niebla, Huelva. You can see their trucks blasting scorched earth with water while excavators desperately carve containment lines into the hillside in a race to stop the flames advancing.

It erupted on Thursday and, fuelled by bone-dry vegetation and punishing strong winds, ripped through more than 20,000 hectares in a matter of days. Those winds have been fanning secondary outbreaks everywhere, making it a nightmare to control.

To give you a sense of the scale of the response, nearly 600 firefighters, 169 vehicles and 21 aircraft have been thrown at it. They’ve been working around the clock building defensive lines to try to box the fire in.

The human cost is already huge. Around 800 people have been evacuated from villages in the fire’s path, including Berrocal, El Pozuelo, Marigenta, Las Delgadas and El Madrono over the border in Seville province. Several roads remain closed as the front keeps shifting.

The UME, Spain’s specialist military unit for natural disasters is now deployed almost every summer for wildfires. It was only created in 2005 after a devastating wildfire season, and now it’s one of the busiest emergency units in Europe.

Spain is Europe’s most wildfire-prone country after Portugal. Last year alone, Spain recorded over 8,000 wildfires, and the EU’s Copernicus system shows the Mediterranean is getting hotter, drier and more flammable. Prolonged drought, record spring temperatures and abandoned farmland full of scrub are creating the perfect tinderbox.

And 2025 is already punishing. According to EU data, by late July more than 434,000 hectares had already burned across the European Union that’s more than double the average for this point in the year.

Major blazes have already hit France, Italy, Greece and Spain, with Andalusia and Extremadura repeatedly on red alert.

Huelva province knows this pain well. The area around Niebla and Doñana is a patchwork of pine forest, scrub and agricultural land that goes up like paper when a levante wind picks up.

Crews on the ground said the next 24 hours are critical to stop it reaching more populated areas.

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