Thousands of Spaniards evacuated during massive wildfires started to return home on Wednesday as the government said it was working to contain some of the worst forest fires in the country's modern history. The return of evacuees is proceeding without incident." By Wednesday afternoon, officials authorised residents to return home to all the towns evacuated due to a wildfire in the province of Ávila, west of Madrid, the interior ministry said. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Wednesday that efforts to extinguish a major wildfire near Madrid were progressing "favourably" and the coming hours would be "decisive". Spanish authorities have reported slightly different figures, but they are of the same order of magnitude, confirming devastation of exceptional scale.