"The Spanish government will not stop at our borders to design this state pact to address the climate emergency. The fires we suffered this year were also suffered by Portugal, and therefore, we will propose to the Portuguese and French governments that we work together on this state pact to address the climate emergency," Sánchez stated.

The Spanish prime minister also said he will convey to the European Commission, "which is the government of Europe," that it is necessary "to do everything but reverse the ecological transition," condemning climate change denial rhetoric. Sánchez, speaking in Madrid at a government event to present the state pact he advocates, considered the impact of climate change to be one of the factors in the size and violence of this summer's fires, the largest ever recorded in Spain.

"Climate change kills," he stated.

But the prime minister also pointed to other reasons for the fires, such as "inadequate" land management, with forest areas "laden with biomass," paths without firebreaks, or a lack of native or flame-resistant tree species.

Sánchez also mentioned "a clearly insufficient prevention policy," citing as examples the lack of plans for this purpose or insufficient fire departments and forest firefighters, citing, in both cases, responsibilities that fall to regional governments. The fires killed four people and burned an estimated 400,000 hectares in Spain in 2025, a record annual figure for the country, according to still-provisional data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which has comparable records dating back to 2006.

The Spanish government last week declared disaster zones for the areas affected by 113 major fires in the country over the past two months.

The fires coincided with a heat wave that hit Spain between August 2 and 18, the "most intense" and third-longest since at least 1975, according to the national meteorological agency (Aemet).