Emergency services are under strain due to the ‘worst’ fires in Portugal in years, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego says.

Deadly wildfires ravaging Spain have burnt the equivalent of nearly half a million football fields this year, setting a new record for the country, a European monitor said Monday.

Wildfires have ravaged more than 450,000 hectares of land across the Iberian peninsula since the start of the year, setting records in a region particularly hard hit by intensive heatwaves and drought affecting southern Europe.

Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez promised on Sunday a "national pact" to deal with the climate emergency, as he visited a western region battling devastating wildfires."The government of Spain will work now so that in September we can have the bases of this national pact to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency,

More than 343,000 hectares of land – the equivalent of nearly half a million football pitches – destroyed this year in Spain, in new record.

Spain's worst wave of wildfires in at least two decades spread to the southern slopes of the Picos de Europa mountain range on Monday and prompted authorities to close part of the popular Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.

Mapped: All the areas where wildfires have broken out in Spain, Turkey and Portugal as record-breaking heatwave continues - France has only issued a red alert eight times in the past 20 years as it ex