Monterrei fire, 29 July 2020 Monterrei, Oímbra, Cualedro
The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Monterrei, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,531 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Ourense since 2016 (of 118 with a page). Number 5 in Spain in 2020, of 89.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,531ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 29 Jul 2020 – 30 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 13
- in a single hotspot: 81 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 98MW
- 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 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 575 ha in 2016.
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
-
1,102 ha reached on 30 Jul9.2 %
-
Oímbra 1,689 inhabitants · 5.0 km from the centre333 ha reached on 30 Jul4.7 %
-
Cualedro 1,538 inhabitants · 6.8 km from the centre96 ha reached on 29 Jul0.8 %
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
- Other natural land67 %
- Agricultural areas33 %
- Broadleaved forest0.7 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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 29 July 2020 and burned 1,037 ha (the satellite measured 1,531 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Cualedro San Millao 29 July 2020 · 14:15 1,037 ha · extinguished on 4 August 2020 · cause: arson
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.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Incendio de Cualedro · Incendio de Monterrei (Flariz) · Incendio de San Millao
- Official area reported: 1,535 ha (the satellite measured 1,531 ha)
- Declared extinguished: 4 August 2020
Sources
- Queda extinguido el incendio de Cualedro, el mayor que se produjo Galicia desde 2017 — El Ideal Gallego (Diario de Arousa), 5 August 2020
- La Xunta da por controlado el incendio de Cualedro (Ourense) tras arrasar más de 1.500 hectáreas — eldiario.es Galicia, 1 August 2020
- El incendio de Cualedro (Ourense) supera las 1.500 hectáreas, el más grande en Galicia desde la 2017 — Salamancartv al Dia (agencia), 31 July 2020
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Jul | 30.2 °C | 27 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Jul | 32.2 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 27 Jul | 31.9 °C | 30 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Jul | 30.2 °C | 32 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 29 Jul | 34.5 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Jul | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Jul after | 33.0 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 25 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 34 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 20 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 5 Aug after | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 6 Aug after | 36.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 7 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 8 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 24 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 9 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 22 % | 31 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 23 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 13Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Monterrei fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2020 and 30 July 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,531 hectares (15.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Monterrei (1,102 ha, 9.2 %); Oímbra (333 ha, 4.7 %); Cualedro (96 ha, 0.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 5.0 km of the centre of Oímbra, 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 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.
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.
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How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 13 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 1,037 official ha against 1,531 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- Checked against news and agencies: 3 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.