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La Estrella fire, July 2020 Aldeanueva de Barbarroya, La Estrella

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2020, 12:50 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2020 in La Estrella, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 303 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in Toledo since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 35 in Spain in 2020, of 89.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Estrella · 2024Villar del Pedroso · 2025Calera y Chozas · 2025Robledo del Mazo · 2022

Burnt area
303ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
30 Jul 2020 – 30 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2020
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
11MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2020 · 11 MW · 1

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
42km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 8 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Aldeanueva de Barbarroya 456 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre
    181 ha
    2.0 %
  2. La Estrella 251 inhabitants · 4.5 km from the centre where it started
    123 ha reached on 30 Jul
    1.6 %

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 scrub53 %
  • Other natural land20 %
  • Agricultural areas16 %
  • Broadleaved forest10 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 85 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area0.11 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

Official record

According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 30 July 2020 and burned 214 ha (the satellite measured 303 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
30 Jul 39.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jul after 39.8 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Aug after 37.7 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Aug after 36.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
3 Aug after 33.9 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Aug after 34.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Aug after 37.4 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 39.9 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Aug after 40.0 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Aug after 37.3 °C 25 % 26 km/h 2.2 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 23 Jul 2020
After · 6 Aug 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the La Estrella fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2020 and 30 July 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 303 hectares (3.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aldeanueva de Barbarroya (181 ha, 2.0 %); La Estrella (123 ha, 1.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 2.5 km of the centre of Aldeanueva de Barbarroya, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection on those dates.
  • Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 214 official ha against 303 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.