Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece battled ongoing wildfires on Friday, an important religious holiday in all three countries, as persistent hot, dry conditions challenged efforts to contain the blazes.

Spain was fighting 14 major fires, according to Virginia Barcones, general director of emergency services.

Temperatures were expected to climb over the weekend.

“Today will once again be a very tough day, with an extreme risk of new fires,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X.

The national weather agency AEMET warned of extreme fire risk in most of the country, including where the largest blazes were burning in the north and west.

A heat wave which brought temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on several days this month was expected to last through Monday.

Fires in the Galicia region forced the closure of several highways.

The high speed rail line connecting it to Spain’s capital, Madrid, remained suspended.

The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System.

That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London.

In both Spain and Portugal it was the Feast of the Assumption, a major Catholic holiday usually marked by family gatherings and religious processions.