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Palomas fire, July 2024 Puebla de la Reina, Ribera del Fresno, Palomas

Out · last measured on 25 Jul 2024

The fire started on 24 July 2024 in Palomas, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,229 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Badajoz since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 5 in Spain in 2024, of 82.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oliva de Mérida · 2025Valencia de las Torres · 2026Valencia de las Torres · 2021Mérida · 2017

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,229ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
24 Jul 2024 – 25 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
5
municipalities
Started on
24 Jul
2024
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Natura 2000
91%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

43°high
34km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 29 Jul.

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 0.8% of the area of London (12 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. Puebla de la Reina 689 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the centre
    752 ha
    5.7 %
  2. Ribera del Fresno 3,130 inhabitants · 11.3 km from the centre
    356 ha
    1.9 %
  3. Palomas 651 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre where it started
    110 ha
    2.7 %
  4. Hornachos 3,375 inhabitants · 12.4 km from the centre
    15 ha
    0.0 %
  5. Alange 1,802 inhabitants · 10.6 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 areas32 %
  • Other natural land28 %
  • Broadleaved forest22 %
  • Other land cover9.8 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub4.6 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland4.5 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 91 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 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 Ribera del Fresno · Incendio cerca de Palomas · Incendio de Puebla del Maestre (foco distinto el mismo dia)
Official area reported: 1,200 ha (the satellite measured 1,229 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)
24 Jul 43.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Jul 38.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Jul after 38.5 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jul after 38.9 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jul after 38.5 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Jul after 37.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 2.4 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2024
After · 1 Aug 2024

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 28 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1037 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
22232425262728
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Palomas fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2024 and 25 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,229 hectares (12.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Puebla de la Reina (752 ha, 5.7 %); Ribera del Fresno (356 ha, 1.9 %); Palomas (110 ha, 2.7 %); Hornachos (15 ha, 0.0 %); Alange (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Palomas and came within 2.9 km of its centre. 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 43.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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
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. No 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.