Spain arrests alleged arsonist linked to wildfire as second firefighter dies

By David Latona and Charlie Devereux

MADRID (Reuters) -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.

"Today we mourn the death of another member of the team fighting fires in Leon," Nicanor Sen, the national government's representative in Castile and Leon wrote on X.

Local media identified the man as 37-year-old Jaime Aparicio, who suffered burns to 85% of his body after being trapped alongside another volunteer near the town of Nogarejas as they attempted to create firebreaks with brush cutters. He was the seventh fatality linked to wildfires this year.

His colleague Abel Ramos, 35, died on Tuesday. On Monday, a separate fire killed a man on the outskirts of Madrid.

Police said they arrested a man in northern Zamora province for starting a fire on a plot of land used to dump rubbish illegally.

The hot weather caused it to spread rapidly, burning 4,000 hectares (15.4 square miles) and leaving five people injured, they said.

Another man was arrested for provoking six fires earlier in August in the southern province of Malaga, police said on Thursday.

Ten people have been arrested since June 1, said police, who were investigating a further 38 for deliberately starting forest fires. Convicted arsonists in Spain could face up to five years in prison and hefty fines.

Three firemen were in critical condition for burns they sustained fighting a fire near Ourense in the northwestern region of Galicia.

LONGEST HEATWAVES

Spain's wildfires are being fanned by one of the longest heatwaves since records began. They have razed about 148,000 hectares (571 square miles) in Spain this year, the second biggest area since 2006.

That makes up more than a quarter of the 512,000 hectares burned in the EU so far this year, according to the European Commission's European Forest Fire Information System.

In Galicia, about 170 children and those supervising them spent Tuesday confined to their summer camp grounds after a wildfire burned the cables of the camp's power system, the regional government said in a statement.

The campers were rescued and moved to a water park on Wednesday.

"We were really scared, but in the midst of the fire, with a few tears, we and the monitors were also dancing. The sky was orange, but everything worked out in the end," 12-year-old Carlota told news agency Europa Press.

Spain received two Canadair water-bombing planes from France on Thursday after it asked for help from European partners to tackle the fires, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said in an interview on RTVE.

Nearly two dozen blazes continued to rage, fuelled by wind and extreme heat. Around 9,500 people were evacuated from their towns and hundreds ordered to stay at home.

(Reporting by David Latona, Joan Faus, Asilinn Laing and Pietro Lombardi; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Bernadette Baum, William Maclean)