Ejulve fire, July 2026 Ejulve, Castellote, Molinos
The fire started on 21 July 2026 in Ejulve, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,631 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
Number 15 in Spain in 2026, of 195.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,631ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 5days
- 21 Jul 2026 – 25 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 79
- in a single hotspot: 188 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 464MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 30 Jul.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,777 ha reached on 21 Jul16 %
-
Castellote 665 inhabitants · 9.0 km from the centre730 ha reached on 24 Jul3.1 %
-
Molinos 232 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre126 ha reached on 21 Jul1.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Sclerophyllous scrub55 %
- Other natural land18 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
- Agricultural areas7.8 %
- Coniferous forest4.8 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 17 %
- ZEPA Río Guadalope - Maestrazgo ES0000306
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- incendio de Ejulve (Teruel) · incendio de La Solana (Ejulve)
- Official area reported: 3,000 ha (the satellite measured 2,631 ha)
Sources
- Los incendios de Ejulve y La Cerollera quedan controlados tras arrasar más de 3.000 hectáreas — Aragón Digital, 29 July 2026
- Controlados los incendios de Ejulve y La Cerollera tras varios días de labores de extinción — La Comarca, 29 July 2026
- Los servicios de extinción de incendios controlan los incendios de Ejulve y La Cerollera (Teruel) — Última Hora (Europa Press), 29 July 2026
- Controlado el incendio de Ejulve con 3.100 hectáreas: los evacuados pueden regresar a sus casas este domingo — Hoy Aragón, 26 July 2026
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 32.0 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 22 Jul | 32.6 °C | 19 % | 56 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Jul | 35.8 °C | 7 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 24 Jul | 34.7 °C | 10 % | 58 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 25 Jul | 26.8 °C | 15 % | 50 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 26 Jul after | 22.6 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Jul after | 27.4 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 28 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Jul after | 35.7 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very high 43 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 23 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 79Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ejulve fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (21 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 25 July 2026 (5 days from 21 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,631 hectares (26.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ejulve (1,777 ha, 16 %); Castellote (730 ha, 3.1 %); Molinos (126 ha, 1.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ejulve and came within 1.0 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 79 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.