Spain braces for massive wildfires in bone-dry forests starved of rain

Firefighters try to extinguish a forest fire in Fuente la Reina, Castellon de la Plana, in March (Alberto Saiz/AP)

Surveying the hills covered with near bone-dry pines stretching to the Pyrenees in the distance, Asier Larranaga has reason to be on guard.

This part of north-east Spain is, like large swaths of the Mediterranean country, braced for wildfires due to the lethal combination of a prolonged drought, record-high temperatures and increasingly dense woods unable to adapt to a fast-changing climate.