Reuters
Firefighters said on Saturday they had stopped Spain's first major wildfire of the year from spreading further through the eastern Valencia region, where it destroyed more than 4,000 hectares (9,884 acres) of forest and forced 1,500 residents to abandon their homes. An unusually dry winter across parts of southern Europe has raised fears of a repeat of 2022, when 785,000 hectares were destroyed - more than double the annual average for the past 16 years, according to European Commission (EC) statistics. In Spain, 493 fires destroyed a record 307,000 hectares of land last year, according to the Commission's European Forest Fire Information System.