More than 267,000 people have been forced from their homes by wildfires raging in France and Spain, which have claimed another life.

Spanish firefighters hoped to get control of a huge blaze near the capital Madrid on Saturday, but an official warned that erratic winds threatened to fan the flames further, as thick grey smoke filled the sky west of the city.

Carlos Novillo, the Madrid regional government’s emergency management chief, said the wildfire near the capital was “at its peak and is currently beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain”.

Spain’s interior ministry said the flames have ravaged nearly 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) in the Madrid region and “between 13,000 and 15,000 hectares” in the neighbouring province of Avila.

The ministry added that a total of 70,000 people had been evacuated.

Firefighters battling a fire in the Salt de l’Aigua ravine in Manises found the body of a man inside a car, officials said. He is the 14th person confirmed dead in Spanish wildfires this month, with 10 others still missing.

Two separate wildfires combined on Friday to become one huge blaze, which was close to merging with yet another in the neighbouring Castilla y Leon region.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday the priority in tackling the wildfires was to “save lives”, warning that a “complex” fight lay ahead.

“Our priority, our thinking, our aim is for your lives, to save your lives and protect inhabited areas,” Sanchez told reporters after attending an emergency planning meeting in Cenicientos, a village at the heart of the fire zone.

“We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be.”

In France, authorities moved 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux – including vacation spots crowded this time of year – in what was probably the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has seen, its interior minister said.

Bordeaux airport has been closed, and the government has warned against road or rail travel to the area.

Sophie Brocas, who heads the local administration of La Nouvelle-Aquitaine et ⁠de la Gironde, which covers the Bordeaux region, said the areas of Le Haillan, Eysines and Merignac were being cleared out.

The Bordeaux region is famed for its vineyards and the ‌city is one of the main transport hubs for tourists visiting nearby holiday resorts on the Atlantic coast.

Around 44,000 people fled the upmarket Cap Ferret peninsula south of Bordeaux, with the only road threatened by flames.

Boats moved hundreds of people away from the fires, while others drove off the peninsula, known for its millionaire residences. More than 50 houses there have been destroyed.

“The fires which ⁠are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before,” French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X ⁠on Saturday.

Lecornu called another government crisis meeting on Saturday for ministers to discuss the response to the emergency, the second such meeting in as many days.

The wildfires have also disrupted Sunday’s Tour de France finale in Paris, which organisers have shortened from 133 to 89 kilometres (89 to 55 miles) after security forces originally assigned to the race were redeployed to fight the fires instead.

The French army has been drafted in ⁠to help, while Macron has asked the European Union for help. He also ordered the army to deploy a military transport aircraft to help with its wildfire suppression operations.

Around 100 Paris firefighters have also been deployed to help, Arnaud de Cacqueray, commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, told the AFP news agency.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the wildfires across France have burned nearly 98,000 hectares, describing it as a “historic record”.

“There are still a number of fires across the country that have not yet been brought under control,” he said.

Some European regions have suffered at least two heatwaves since May. And drought blamed on human-fuelled climate change has heightened the threat from wildfires this year, the World Weather Attribution group said in a study published this week.