Wildfire and property in Spain: burnt areas, risk zones and what the maps show

A villa with pine woods behind it looks peaceful in the listing photos. Whether that hillside burnt fifteen years ago is often impossible to tell by eye. For a buyer it still matters, because Spain's forestry law, the Ley de Montes (Ley 43/2003, consolidated text last updated on 09.11.2024), attaches a long restriction to burnt woodland. On top of that, houses on the edge of the forest carry duties of their own, and each region sets them differently.

What does Spanish law say about land after a fire?

On burnt forest land, any change of forest use (cambio de uso forestal) is banned for at least 30 years.

That is Art. 50 of the Ley de Montes, in the version introduced by Ley 21/2015 and in force since 21.10.2015. The same article obliges the regions (comunidades autónomas) to guarantee the conditions for restoring burnt forest land. It also bans any activity incompatible with the regrowth of the vegetation, for a period set by regional law.

A shorter restriction follows straight after a fire. Uses that are incompatible with regeneration are closed off for a period that must exceed 1 year, unless the forestry authority expressly lifts the closure (Art. 50.2).

The law allows exceptions to the 30-year ban, and they are narrow. A region may permit the change of use only if it was already provided for before the fire:

• in a planning instrument that had been approved before the fire, or
• in a plan still awaiting approval that had already passed a favourable environmental assessment or, where none was required, public consultation (información pública).

There is a third route. For overriding reasons of public interest a region may agree a change of use, but only by law and only with compensatory measures that recover a forest area equivalent to the one that burnt. For catalogued forests (montes catalogados) the law expressly excludes this third exception.

Every legal figure above and below comes from the national or regional text in the version named. For a specific plot, the answer of the regional forestry authority and the town hall (ayuntamiento) is authoritative.

Does the 30-year rule reach every house near a burnt hillside?

No. It applies to monte, the legal term for forest and wooded land, and Art. 5 of the Ley de Montes expressly excludes urban land (terrenos urbanos) and land under cultivation from that definition.

An apartment in an urbanisation on urban land is therefore outside the rule, even if a fire came right up to the fence. A rural plot (finca) that is wholly or partly woodland is a different case. There, the classification of the land decides.

So the questions come in order. Was the burnt land monte at all? If so, was the change of use already in an approved or publicly consulted plan before the fire, or has a law allowed it in the public interest? A map answers neither question.

Where are past burnt areas recorded, and how far back?

There is no single complete map of every fire in Spain. Several sources overlap, and each one reaches back a different distance.

The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), part of Copernicus, has mapped burnt areas from satellite images since 2003. Until 2018 it recorded only fires of roughly 30 hectares or more. Since 2018, Sentinel-2 imagery has let it detect smaller fires too. By its own account the EFFIS outlines cover about 95 per cent of the area burnt in the EU each year.

EFFIS states its limits openly. Small burnt or unburnt patches below the resolution of the images are missing. A wildfire, an agricultural burn and a prescribed burn look the same in the data. And the start and last-update dates it gives need not match the day the fire broke out or was put out.

The oldest series is national. The general wildfire statistics (Estadística General de Incendios Forestales, EGIF) of the environment ministry MITECO have run since 1968. They are built from the fire reports each region sends in, fire by fire. EGIF separates small outbreaks under 1 hectare (conatos) from fires of 1 hectare or more, and from 500 hectares a fire counts as a large fire. As a statistic, EGIF counts fires and areas rather than drawing their outlines on a map.

For outlines going further back, the regional maps are the better source:

1. Andalucía (REDIAM)since 1975burnt areas of each fire season, drawn from satellite images; the smallest mapped fire size is not stated
2. Catalonia1986 to 2024outlines depend on the availability and quality of satellite images, according to the Generalitat
3. Comunitat Valenciana1993 to 2024not every fire of the period is mapped; the map is for information only
4. EFFISsince 2003all of Europe; until 2018 fires of about 30 hectares and more, smaller ones since
5. EGIF statisticssince 1968national figures built from regional fire reports, with fires and areas rather than outlines

The Valencian map carries its own warning. It is informative and not binding, and where it conflicts with the fire report, the report prevails.

How the Claronda property check uses these sources

In three regions the property check compares a plot with the regional maps as well as EFFIS, from 1975 in Andalucía, from 1986 in Catalonia and from 1993 in Valencia. Everywhere else it relies on EFFIS outlines from 2016. The report states which period was covered for your property.

Of 435 properties checked by 29.09.2026, 2 lay inside the outline of an earlier fire and 433 did not.

How far can you trust a clean result?

A clean result describes the maps. It says nothing certain about the hillside.

Each source names its own gaps. EFFIS recorded only fires of about 30 hectares and more until 2018, so a smaller fire from those years can be missing, and patches below the image resolution are missing even now. Valencia does not map every fire between 1993 and 2024. In Catalonia every outline depends on the quality of the satellite images. Andalucía's long series from 1975 does not state the smallest fire it maps.

Then there is the time span. The 30-year rule reaches further back than some of the maps do. For a house on Mallorca or in Murcia, the property check covers fires from 2016 only, because no regional burnt-area map is connected there, and a fire before 2016 stays invisible in that result however large it was.

A hit is a clear signal. A missing hit is reassurance for the years and fire sizes covered, and for nothing beyond them.

What are designated wildfire risk zones, and who publishes them?

High-risk zones (zonas de alto riesgo, ZAR) are areas where the frequency or severity of fires, and the value of what is at stake, call for special protection, and which the region in question declares as such. That definition is in the national civil protection guideline for wildfires, Real Decreto 893/2013 (consolidated text updated on 21.06.2023).

At national level the framework has shifted. Since Real Decreto-ley 15/2022, references in the Ley de Montes to defence plans for high-risk zones are read as references to the annual plans for wildfire prevention, surveillance and firefighting under Art. 48. Every region must draw up such an annual plan for its whole territory and approve and publish it by 31 October of the previous year (Art. 48.3). The environment ministry must also produce a wildfire risk zoning tool from the regions' data and publish it on its website (Art. 48 bis).

When the risk is very high or extreme, Art. 48.6 d) bans, among other things, machinery that produces sparks or electrical discharges in forests and in a strip of 400 metres around them, unless the authority permits it.

Two regions are in the Claronda data with zone maps:

• Balearic Islands. The regional government declares its ZAR in the fourth general wildfire defence plan (IV Pla General) and publishes the zones as a downloadable map file. The duties a homeowner has inside a Balearic ZAR follow from regional law and are not summarised in the plan.
• Comunitat Valenciana. The rules are in the regional forestry plan PATFOR (Decreto 58/2013).

For Andalucía, Catalonia, Murcia and the Canary Islands, no zone dataset is connected to the property check, so for properties there the report gives no zone result either way.

• Balearic Islands (ZAR)1of 47 properties checked
• Comunitat Valenciana (PATFOR)5of 120 properties checked

These counts describe the 167 properties checked in the two regions, chosen by auctions and customer requests. They are no sample of either region.

What duties come with a house on the edge of woodland?

The duties depend on the region, and the national rules mainly address new buildings.

RD 893/2013 calls the zone where buildings meet the forest the wildland-urban interface (interfaz urbano-forestal). Art. 44 of the Ley de Montes requires the regions to set safety rules for buildings in and near forests and to regulate this interface specifically. Under Art. 9 g), every municipality must keep an up-to-date map of its settlements and urbanisations showing, among other things, how close they are to the forest, their access routes and their hydrants.

For buildings in the interface, the guideline provides for a self-protection plan (plan de autoprotección). The owner of the building is responsible for it. Which buildings need one is for each region to decide.

Annex II of RD 893/2013 sets out content for these plans. For new buildings and urbanisations next to forest that are not directly joined to a town, it requires a protective strip 30 metres wide within the same property, free of dry vegetation and with thinned-out trees, and where possible 8 times the height of the dominant vegetation. In declared ZAR it adds special passive protection for the building.

Valencia is the clearest example of regional rules for existing homes. Art. 32 of the PATFOR, quoted here as published in the regional gazette (DOGV) on 08.05.2013, requires isolated houses in or next to forest to have a defence area of at least 30 metres, or at least 50 metres where the slope exceeds 30 per cent. Creating and maintaining that area is the responsibility of the owner of the house or land. Where urban land lies less than 100 metres from forest, the plan also requires, among other things, keeping branches at least 3 metres away from any building. Check the current version of Decreto 58/2013 with the Generalitat Valenciana, since later amendments would prevail.

What should you ask before buying near woodland?

1. Ask the regional forestry authority and the ayuntamiento whether the plot is wholly or partly classified as monte, and whether a restriction under Art. 50 Ley 43/2003 applies.
2. Look the plot up in EFFIS and, in Andalucía, Catalonia or Valencia, in the regional burnt-area map, and note which years each map covers.
3. Ask the ayuntamiento whether the house lies in the wildland-urban interface and whether the region requires a self-protection plan for it.
4. In the Balearic Islands, check whether the plot lies in a ZAR; in the Comunitat Valenciana, ask which defence area the PATFOR requires around the house.
5. Ask the seller whether the defence area or protective strip has been kept up, and look at the vegetation around the house on site.

A Claronda report checks the fire history and, where data exists, the wildfire zone for one address, and it names the period each source covers. You can start a property check for the house you are considering. For water rather than fire, the guide to flood risk covers the official flood maps.

In short

Spain's forestry law bans any change of forest use on burnt woodland for at least 30 years (Art. 50 Ley 43/2003), but only on land that counts as monte, so urban land is outside it. EFFIS maps burnt areas since 2003, reliably for small fires only since 2018; Andalucía, Catalonia and Valencia reach back to 1975, 1986 and 1993. High-risk zones are declared by the regions, with the Balearic ZAR and the Valencian PATFOR as published examples. A clean map result covers only its own years and fire sizes, and for a specific plot the regional forestry authority and the town hall have the final word.