The fires raging across Portugal claimed their first victim, when the former mayor of the eastern town of Guarda died fighting fires there, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced.
The president offered "heartfelt condolences to the mayor of Guarda for the death of former mayor Carlos Damaso, victim of a fire he was fighting in his parish, asking that he pass them on to his family", said the president's statement.
Mr Rebelo de Sousa added that he had cut short his holidays and returned to the presidential palace, joining a meeting of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority.
For days now, several thousand firefighters have been battling fires in various parts of the country.
Like its neighbour Spain, Portugal has invoked the EU's civil protection mechanism to ask for help, requesting four firefighting aircraft to use until Monday, the presidency said on X.
After devastating fires in 2017 that killed 119 people across the country, Portugal boosted investment on fire prevention tenfold, doubling its budget for fighting forest fires.
It subsequently managed to reduce the amount of land lost to 134,000 acres between 2018 and 2023, a third of what was lost between 2001 and 2017, according to government figures.
It comes as all of Spain is on heatwave alert while the weather agency warned that much of the country is at "very high to extreme risk" from wildfires.
The situation has improved for several other southern European nations, but Greece is still fighting fires on one Aegean island.
Much of Spain has already endured nearly two weeks of high temperatures.
The searing heat has spread to the northwestern region of Cantabria which had so far been spared.
Temperatures there are forecast to pass 40C, said Aemet, the national weather agency.
The risk of fires over the weekend and into Monday is "very high or extreme in most of the country", it added.
Spain has endured a devastating season of fires, with 157,501 hectares reduced to ashes since the start of the year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
Yet that figure is still well short of 2022, when more than 306,000 hectares went up in smoke.
Three people have died during the fires, including two young volunteers in their 30s who lost their lives trying to put out a blaze in the Castile and Leon area.
France has sent two water-bombing planes to help try to douse the flames in the northwestern region, where a dozen fires are still raging.
The railway line between Madrid and the northwestern region of Galicia remains closed as well as ten main roads in the country.
Elsewhere in southern Europe, lower temperatures and reduced wind are helping to improve the situation in Greece and the Balkans, where rain is forecast.
Firefighters remain in Patras, Greece's third-largest city, due to "scattered" fires and are on the look-out if any reignite.
The most active is still on the Mediterranean island of Chios, in the northeastern Aegean Sea, where eight aircraft have been deployed to try to douse the flames.
The risk of fire remains high in the Attica region that includes the capital, Athens, and the southern Pelopponese peninsula, the Civil Protection agency warned.
In Albania, initial government estimates said that thousands of cattle had been killed and 40 homes destroyed in just three days of wildfires.
