Today in Spain: A roundup of the latest news on Friday

Spain overtakes Germany as EU country with most asylum applications

Spain has overtaken Germany as the EU country with the most asylum claims, data from the European Union Agency for the Protection of Asylum Seekers (EUAA) shows.

As of last May, Spain had received a total of 63,470 asylum applications, while Germany received almost 10,000 fewer (54,085).

January was the only month in which Germany surpassed Spain in terms of the number of applications (14,920 compared to 13,220), but since February, Spain has topped the list every month.

Fire outside Madrid spreads

A forest fire that started in the Toledo town of Méntrida left Madrid under a dense cloud of smoke on Thursday afternoon, turning the sky orange and left the ground covered in ash.

The fire has been upgraded to level 2 (on a scale of 0 to 3) as by Friday morning it had burned 3,000 hectares of forest and is now threatening residential areas.

At least 50 people have been evacuated and five people have been treated for smoke inhalation.

READ ALSO: Giant cloud of forest fire smoke smothers Madrid

Brussels opens legal proceedings against Spain over bank takeover

The European Commission has announced the opening of legal proceedings against Spain for its role in BBVA's takeover bid for Banco Sabadell, a controversial move that the government authorised last summer.

Brussels argues that certain provisions of Spanish banking legislation and competition law which grant the Spanish state “unlimited powers to intervene in bank mergers and acquisitions” in fact “infringe the exclusive powers of the European Central Bank (ECB) and national supervisors under EU banking regulations.”

Spain’s Economy Minister, Carlos Cuerpo, defended the government's decision, arguing that it had imposed a series of conditions on the operation “exclusively and strictly in line” with Spanish law, which is now being called into question by Brussels.

Spain sees historic drop in supply of homes for sale

The supply of homes for sale in Spain fell by 20 percent during the second quarter of 2025, according to a study published by Idealista.

That represents the largest year-on-year drop ever recorded since Idealista began keeping records. All capital cities now have fewer homes on the market for sale than a year ago and all, except Malaga (-3 percent), experienced double-digit declines so far this year.

The biggest drops were in Segovia and Ciudad Real, with a 45 percent slump in both cities. They were followed by Oviedo (-44 percent), Albacete (-41 percent) and Logroño (-40 percent).