The wildfires assailing Portugal’s north and central regions are ‘getting no better’. As our report yesterday said, the place names may change, but the overall drama is continuing.

In the early hours, new fires broke out in Sátão, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Arganil. Villages have been surrounded, homeowners evacuated for their own safety and populations that have barely slept a wink for days are still on their feet, pulling hoses and trying to protect their and other people’s property.

This is a real drama: wildfires are part of Portugal’s summers, but 2025 has been a summer of record damages this far, and we are nowhere near the end of it: well over 60,000 hectares of land have been consumed by flames; in Vila Real, where fires have been burning for almost two weeks, there is barely a landscape that has escaped. SIC reports that the fire has forced the evacuation of scores of villages over these last dreadful days .

Trancoso is another location where a wildfire is causing serious concerns; winds whipping up this afternoon are expected to make firefighters’ work even more difficult.

A quick look at the fogos.pt online site, shows clearly how these fires are grouped: all in the interior, which is hotter even than temperatures along the coast.

According to RTP, which is , Vila Real is braced for a change of wind direction mid-afternoon, which could make the situation even more precarious by threatening villages once again.

Talking to SIC Notícias, forest fire ‘expert’ Miguel Almeida, working out of the ‘Centro de Estudos sobre Incêndios Florestais’ (forest fire study centre), stressed that winds are going to be the problem today throughout the north; gusts will be intense, he said, adding: “All communities must be on alert, even if the main fire front has already passed by. If the wind suddenly changes direction, it can turn what was previously a flank of the fire into a head fire, threatening villages that might otherwise be calmer.”

“All citizens must be very alert to changes in wind direction”, he reiterated.

In Arganil, mayor Luís Paulo Costa admits “we cannot anticipated how this fire will end”, as the variables facing combat are simply too extensive.