This photo, provided by France's Securite Civile shows French fire fighters heading to a wildfire near Corporales, northern Spain, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. Securite Civile via AP

Climate activists smeared Barcelona's Sagrada Familia basilica with red and black paint on Sunday to express outrage at summer forest fires that have ravaged swaths of Spain, the Futuro Vegetal activist group said.

In a video the group posted to social media, police officers are seen arresting two protesters as they shouted for "climate justice."

Activists said in the post's caption that their demonstration aimed to protest the government's "complicity" in the wildfires that scorched southern Spain's Iberian Peninsula. They also said roughly 70% of the country's wildfires are related to livestock farming, citing the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. CBS News wasn't able to independently confirm that statistic, but the Spanish government has held several meetings in recent weeks to respond to the blazes and address what the nation's leadership has called a "climate emergency."

The Sagrada Familia, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, is one of Barcelona's main tourist attractions.

Futuro Vegetal alleges that the Spanish government has taken insufficient action on climate change, notably to quell the recent clutch of fires that have caused extensive damage.

The fires have left four people dead and ravaged some 870,00 acres of land in the past fortnight alone, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). More than 280 individual fires have burned nearly 1 million acres of land across Spain since the beginning of 2025, according to EFFIS data, with the amount of acreage burned being much higher than in any other year of the last decade.

Spain's government called the fires "one of the biggest environmental catastrophes" the country has witnessed in recent memory, and acknowledged a link with climate change. A major heat wave that struck Europe this summer fueled destructive wildfires in multiple countries, with Greece, France, Portugal and Turkey all contending with severe blazes, in addition to Spain.

This weekend saw the scope of the problem recede in Spain, with civil protection services director Virginia Barcones saying Saturday that the emergency was "coming to an end."

Futuro Vegetal, which has links to similar groups abroad, has staged dozens of similar protests, including one in 2022 when they glued their hands to the frames of paintings by Spanish master Francisco de Goya at Madrid's Prado Museum.

Paint was also thrown at a super yacht in Ibiza, reportedly belonging to Nancy Walton Laurie, the billionaire heiress of U.S. retail giant Walmart and a mansion of former FC Barcelona star Lionel Messi in Ibiza.

Spanish police said last year they had arrested 22 members of Futuro Vegetal, including the two who took part in the Prado protest and the group's three main leaders.

Some of the activist group's demonstration approaches have been reflected in climate protests elsewhere in Europe. In the United Kingdom, environmental activists were jailed last year for demonstrations that included splashing a van Gogh painting with soup. Other activists in the U.K. have splattered artworks with paint, sprayed buildings with fake blood and sprayed stones at Stonehenge with orange paint in efforts to raise awareness about climate change.


Tourists visit the Sagrada Familia while protecting themselves with water bottles, fans, hats, and portable fans during a heat wave in Barcelona, Spain, in August 2025. Marc Asensio/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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