MADRID (AP) — Spain has officially entered a period of long-term drought, owing to high temperatures and low rainfall over the past three years, and likely faces another year of heatwaves and forest fires. The country’s Aemet weather agency said Friday that statistics showed Spain entered a long-duration drought at the end of 2022 and the first three months of 2023 show no major signs of change. “The first available predictions for the summer of 2023 point to a likely situation of temperatures once again above normal,” said Aemet spokesman Rubén del Campo, adding that the coming summer “the risk of fires could be very high given the high temperatures.” But Del Campo pointed out that the country has experienced severe droughts before in 2017, 2005 and at the end of the 1990s and 1980s.