In his more than a decade battling wildfires, firefighter Manuel Rubio had never seen a blaze like the one that raged for the past week in eastern Spain. Not this early in the year.
The forest fire that that broke out last Thursday near the village of Villanueva de Viver surprised Rubio and fire experts by displaying an unusual ferocity for spring, when in previous years lower temperatures helped keep fires manageable. That doesn't bode well for a country that led Europe in burned land during a record-hot 2022.
