A heatwave is continuing to affect the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of firefighters have been deployed to battle ongoing blazes and towns have been evacuated. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited affected regions to meet with the heads of emergency teams.

Emergency services are under strain due to the ‘worst’ fires in Portugal in years, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego says.

The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London.

Spain's worst wave of wildfires in at least two decades spread to the southern slopes of the Picos de Europa mountain range on Monday and prompted authorities to close part of the popular Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.

Spanish firefighters are still battling 12 major and active wildfires in the northwestern Galicia region as much of southern Europe reels from record hot temperatures. View on euronews

A second volunteer firefighter has died after battling a wildfire in the northern Spanish province of Leon, while police arrested a man for allegedly starting a separate blaze as the country faced one of its worst summers for fires in 20 years.

Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez promised on Sunday a "national pact" to deal with the climate emergency, as he visited a western region battling devastating wildfires."The government of Spain will work now so that in September we can have the bases of this national pact to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency,