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Llerena fire, August 2025 Llerena, Montemolín, Fuente de Cantos

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2025, 13:36 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2025 in Llerena, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 5,829 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Badajoz since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 15 in Spain in 2025, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Montemolín · 2026Puebla del Maestre · 2024Valencia de las Torres · 2021Valencia de las Torres · 2026

Burnt area
5,829ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
14 Aug 2025 – 16 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
5
municipalities
Started on
14 Aug
2025
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 184 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug16 Aug
16 Aug 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2025 · 2,945 MW · 103 15 Aug 2025 · 123 MW · 52 16 Aug 2025 · 59 MW · 4
14 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug

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
36km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Llerena 5,642 inhabitants · 6.6 km from the centre where it started
    3,545 ha reached on 14 Aug
    22 %
  2. Montemolín 1,231 inhabitants · 8.0 km from the centre
    940 ha reached on 14 Aug
    4.6 %
  3. Fuente de Cantos 4,583 inhabitants · 13.6 km from the centre
    762 ha reached on 15 Aug
    3.0 %
  4. Bienvenida 1,999 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the centre
    399 ha reached on 15 Aug
    4.3 %
  5. Villagarcía de la Torre 909 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the centre
    192 ha
    2.8 %

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

  • Agricultural areas71 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland12 %
  • Broadleaved forest8.0 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub5.0 %
  • Coniferous forest3.1 %
  • Mixed forest0.6 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 7 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.24 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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

Checked against the press

Checked on 29 September 2026

We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
Incendio forestal de Llerena (2025) · incendio de Llerena y Pallares
Official area reported: 5,900 ha (the satellite measured 5,829 ha)
Declared stabilised: 18 August 2025

Sources

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)
14 Aug 37.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Aug 38.3 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Aug 39.3 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
17 Aug after 39.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Aug after 33.1 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Aug after 29.6 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Aug after 28.4 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Aug after 29.8 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Aug after 31.8 °C 30 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Aug after 30.8 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Aug after 30.0 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Aug after 32.4 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Aug after 32.5 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2025
After · 23 Aug 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 16 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1054 µg/m³
Optical depth0.57
1213141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 159Every 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 Llerena fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2025 and 16 August 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 5,829 hectares (58.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Llerena (3,545 ha, 22 %); Montemolín (940 ha, 4.6 %); Fuente de Cantos (762 ha, 3.0 %); Bienvenida (399 ha, 4.3 %); Villagarcía de la Torre (192 ha, 2.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.2 km of the centre of Villagarcía de la Torre, 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 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very 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.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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. 159 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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.