Mombeltrán fire, July 2025 Mombeltrán, El Arenal, Cuevas del Valle
The fire started on 29 July 2025 in Mombeltrán, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,231 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Ávila since 2016 (of 29 with a page). Number 30 in Spain in 2025, of 158.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,231ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 29 Jul 2025 – 31 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 229
- in a single hotspot: 112 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.8GW
- 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 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 26 ha in 2019.
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
-
Mombeltrán where it started967 ha reached on 29 Jul19 %
-
El Arenal 961 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre634 ha reached on 30 Jul23 %
-
Cuevas del Valle 506 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre612 ha reached on 29 Jul32 %
-
Arenas de San Pedro 6,460 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre22 ha reached on 30 Jul0.1 %
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
- Scrub and transitional woodland61 %
- Coniferous forest12 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub9.9 %
- Mixed forest6.5 %
- Other natural land6.2 %
- Agricultural areas4.2 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 71 %
- ZEPA + LIC Sierra de Gredos ES4110002
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 Mombeltrán · Incendio de Cuevas del Valle · Incendio de El Arenal
- Official area reported: 2,033 ha (the satellite measured 2,231 ha)
Sources
- El incendio forestal de Cuevas del Valle en Ávila se encuentra confinado en un perímetro de seguridad, centrándose los trabajos en evitar y controlar reproducciones — Junta de Castilla y León (nota de prensa), 31 July 2025 · official source
- Incendio en Cuevas del Valle: Situación actual y medidas tras el fuego — AvilaRed, 7 August 2025
- Mombeltrán y Cuevas del Valle, orgullosos de la actitud de sus vecinos en el incendio — Tribuna de Ávila, 4 August 2025
- Evolución muy favorable para el incendio de Cuevas del Valle (Ávila) sin llama viva, aunque a semanas de quedar totalmente extinguido — COPE Ávila, 1 August 2025
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul | 28.1 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Jul | 26.9 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 31 Jul | 28.6 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Aug after | 26.1 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 7 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 1 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 615 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 183: 12 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 · 229Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,532 haSanta Cruz del ValleAugust 2022 · 4 days · 8 km away
- 652 haSan Martín del PimpollarAugust 2017 · 2 days · 11 km away
- 1,493 haGavilanesJune 2019 · 4 days · 13 km away
- 977 haHoyocaseroAugust 2017 · 2 days · 14 km away
- 23,078 haNavalacruzAugust 2021 · 7 days · 30 km away
- 1,615 haNavaluengaJuly 2025 · 4 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mombeltrán fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2025 and 31 July 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 2,231 hectares (22.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Mombeltrán (967 ha, 19 %); El Arenal (634 ha, 23 %); Cuevas del Valle (612 ha, 32 %); Arenas de San Pedro (22 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.8 km of the centre of El Arenal, 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 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 229 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.