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Malagón fire, July 2022 Malagón, Los Cortijos

Out · last measured on 24 Jul 2022

The fire started on 19 July 2022 in Malagón, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,509 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Ciudad Real since 2016 (of 24 with a page). Number 23 in Spain in 2022, of 196.

Burnt area
2,509ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
19 Jul 2022 – 24 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
19 Jul
2022
Heat detections
87
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul24 Jul

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 2 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. Malagón 3,011 inhabitants · 22.0 km from the town where it started
    2,191 ha reached on 26 Jul
    6.0 %
  2. Los Cortijos 848 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the town
    323 ha reached on 26 Jul
    3.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Sclerophyllous scrub40 %
  • Agricultural areas21 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland10 %
  • Other natural land9.4 %
  • Broadleaved forest8.6 %
  • Coniferous forest8.4 %
  • Mixed forest1.8 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Checked against the press

Checked on 30 September 2026

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

Also known as
incendio de Piedrala · incendio Malagón-Los Cortijos
Official area reported: 2,800 ha (the satellite measured 2,509 ha)

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)
19 Jul 32.3 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Jul 35.2 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jul 36.7 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Jul 36.8 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Jul 36.9 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
24 Jul 37.0 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
25 Jul after 35.7 °C 7 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
26 Jul after 34.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
27 Jul after 33.0 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Jul after 33.3 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Jul after 34.9 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Jul after 35.8 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Jul after 36.1 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Aug after 36.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug after 36.6 °C 17 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2022
After · 31 Jul 2022

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 26 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1056 µg/m³
1718192021222324252627
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 · 87Every 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 Malagón fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 19 July 2022 and 24 July 2022: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,509 hectares (25.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Malagón (2,191 ha, 6.0 %); Los Cortijos (323 ha, 3.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.9 km of Los Cortijos. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.