Southern Europe bakes and burns, turning holiday hotspots into infernos

Black smoke is darkening blood-red skies across the continent - devastating residents and forcing travellers to start searching for coolcations' further north

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Somehow, the heat hits harder when you're on holiday.

Tourists who hoped to idle on Croatian beaches this week will have instead singed their feet on scorching sand. Families on a break in Madrid will have choked on smoke from a deadly wildfire that ripped through a suburb of the Spanish capital. Visitors to Mount Vesuvius in Italy will have been turned away from the trails as firefighters battled blazes on the volcano's slopes.