After enduring its most destructive wildfire season in decades last year, the Spanish region of Galicia is turning to artificial intelligence and satellite technology to detect blazes within minutes. The regional government has unveiled what it calls its largest fire prevention plan in history, backed by a €213 million investment, as it seeks to adapt to the growing threat of megafires across southern Europe.
In 2025, wildfires scorched more than 118,000 hectares of Galician land—an area larger than Berlin—with the Larouco fire in Ourense becoming the largest single blaze ever recorded in the region. The devastation has pushed authorities to overhaul their approach, moving from reactive firefighting to early detection using a network of cameras, satellites, and machine learning models.
How the AI System Works
The new system, integrated into Galicia's internal fire management platform Xeocode, relies on convolutional neural networks trained to recognize the visual signatures of a fire: a rising column of smoke, a heat signature, or unusual patterns of color and movement. A constant stream of images from 241 surveillance cameras installed in high-risk parishes feeds into the AI, which flags potential fires and sends automatic alerts to technicians for verification before crews are dispatched.
Two years of pilot testing showed the system could detect a fire from more than 15 kilometers away, and up to 25 kilometers in favorable weather. The goal is to shrink the gap between ignition and detection from hours to minutes, since a fire caught early can often be contained to a small area, while one that burns unnoticed overnight can spread across thousands of hectares.
Regional president Alfonso Rueda said the changes were designed to “adapt to the new types of fires” of “enormous intensity” seen in recent summers, according to Galicia Press. The high-risk season began on 1 July, and the system is now operational across the region.
Galicia's Unique Vulnerability
Galicia's combination of dense forestry, an aging rural population, and widespread land abandonment has long made it one of the most fire-prone areas in Europe, alongside Portugal and Greece. The region's fragmented landscape, with small plots often left untended, creates a continuous fuel load that can turn a small ignition into a megafire within hours.
The 2025 season was part of a broader trend: the European Union recorded its most destructive wildfire season on record, with more than 1,079,000 hectares burnt across 25 of its 27 member states. Southern Europe, in particular, has seen a rise in extreme fire behavior linked to hotter, drier summers driven by climate change.
European Neighbors Adopt Similar Technologies
Galicia is not alone in turning to AI and space-based detection. Greece has gone furthest, becoming the first country to integrate a dedicated satellite constellation into its national firefighting system. Four nanosatellites built by German company OroraTech scan the country twice daily, using thermal sensors to detect blazes as small as four meters across. When a fire is identified, AI-processed data on its location, size, and intensity is sent directly to national commanders, helping them prioritize resources when multiple fires break out simultaneously. The models are also trained to filter out false alarms from sun-warmed rock faces, solar panels, or overheated factory roofs.
Portugal, which has the largest cumulative burnt area of any European country over the past two decades, has also begun integrating satellite-based detection into its national response. The trend reflects a wider shift across fire-prone parts of the continent, as countries increasingly combine cameras, satellites, and machine learning to stay ahead of the flames.
In Spain, the urgency is underscored by recent events: a wildfire near Madrid forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people earlier this year, and emergencies have been declared as blazes rage across southern Europe. Galicia's new plan, with its emphasis on early detection and rapid response, represents a bet that technology can help break the cycle of destruction—but it also underscores the scale of the challenge facing the continent.
