Aragon has once again rewritten its darkest history of forest fires in just a few weeks. If in mid-July it was the fire of the Cinco Villas that entered directly among the most devastating recorded in the Community, now the fire of Las Peñas de Riglos has gone even further. The latest estimates place the affected area at 18,400 hectares, a figure that is still provisional because the fire is still not extinguished.
With this data, the fire that began on August 10 provisionally becomes the largest affected in the history recorded in Aragon, even ahead of the great fire in Villarluengo in 1994. That fire, for decades the main reference of major forest disasters in Aragon, affected 18,072 hectares.
PEÑAS DE RIGLOS BEATS VILLARLUENGO
The Villarluengo fire has been for more than 30 years the great black reference in Aragonese forestry history. It was declared on July 2, 1994, and was said to be related to lightning from a dry storm. This tragic accident ended up affecting 18,072 hectares, according to historical data collected by the Government of Aragon. For more than three decades no other large fire recorded in the Community had reached that area.
The fire of Peñas de Riglos has now broken that barrier. The latest estimates raise its area to 18,400 hectares, around 328 more than Villarluengo. The data, however, must still be considered provisional until the fire is completely extinguished and the definitive measurement of the perimeter is closed.
It therefore exceeds the rest of the large fires that have devastated Aragon in recent years, such as the one suffered this summer in Orés and Las Cinco Villas, with around 15,000 hectares, or those of Luna or Ateca, with more than 13,000 hectares each.
THE WORST SUMMER IN RECENT HISTORY
Aragon has therefore registered two of the three largest fires in its history this summer, and it has done so just one month apart. Between the two fires, around 33,400 hectares alone have been affected. To these must be added the areas covered by other large fires this summer, such as Tamarite de Litera and Alcampell, Leciñena and the Sierra de Alcubierre.
The sum of the areas reported for the main fires already raises the balance of the summer to over 40,000 hectares affected in Aragon, when there is still a campaign ahead and some perimeters are not definitive. These figures therefore also make 2026 the worst summer for fires in Aragon’s recent history, taking as a reference the statistical series published by the Government of Aragon with data from 2005.
Until now, the hardest year of those two decades had been 2022, when fires affected 21,532 hectares of forest area. That summer was marked, among others, by the great fires of Ateca and Añón de Moncayo. The second worst record corresponded to 2009, with 19,648 hectares of forest burned. The summer of 2026 has already far exceeded those records in total area affected.
A SUMMER THAT ALREADY DOUBLES THE WORST RECORD SINCE 2005
The magnitude of the 2026 campaign is unprecedented in the recent series. The more than 40,000 hectares affected by the main fires practically double the 21,532 hectares of forest recorded during the whole of 2022. The distance is even greater compared to an average year. Between 2005 and 2025, Aragon has registered an average of 381 fires per year and some 3,634 hectares of forest burned.
Peñas de Riglos represents the most extreme case. If the provisional 18,400 hectares are maintained when the perimeter is definitively closed, the fire will have displaced Villarluengo after 32 years and will be registered as the largest known fire in Aragon by area affected. And it will have done so just a month after the Cinco Villas had already forced the historical ranking of the great Aragonese fires to be modified.
