At least 12 people have died in a wildfire at Los Gallardos, in Almería province in the autonomous community of Andalusia, southeast Spain, in the deadliest such blaze in the region’s history.
Juanma Moreno, president of the Andalusian regional government, raised the toll from 11 as he spoke to reporters at the forward command post set up in the fire station at Turre.
Four of the victims are believed to have been British. Their bodies were found inside a right-hand-drive car near the village of Bédar.
They had been trying to escape a cluster of farmhouses and isolated homes along a route other than the one set out by the emergency services, according to Antonio Sanz, the Andalusian regional government’s minister for the presidency, health and emergencies.
Seven more died in a second location. They belonged to a group of nine trying to flee on foot, two of whom were rescued alive.
One of the survivors was Spanish and the dead may have been Belgian or British, Sanz said. He said those who left late or took unsuitable routes could have walked into a trap.
Eight people have been injured. The four most seriously hurt suffered burns and were flown by helicopter from Torrecárdenas hospital in Almería to the Virgen del Rocío hospital in Seville.
Moreno said 23 people remained unaccounted for. Sanz said there was no official list of missing people and that authorities were cross-checking records at hospitals and shelters.
He did not rule out further deaths.
Some 600 residents have been evacuated overnight and through the morning of July 10, 2026, of whom 193 have been rehoused in a theatre at Lubrín, a sports centre at Garrucha and a farmstead at Antas.
The fire broke out on the afternoon of July 9, 2026 and is thought to have been started by a fallen power cable. It has burned 3,150 hectares.
Sanz described a highly complex fire, spreading at extraordinary speed in strong winds through terrain scored with ravines that machinery cannot enter and dotted with houses embedded in woodland.
He said instructions from the authorities were not recommendations and that the decision to confine residents of Bédar as the flames approached had averted worse.
A total of 464 personnel and 124 vehicles are deployed. Infoca, Andalusia’s forest firefighting service, has 21 crews and nine engines on the ground, supported by the Military Emergencies Unit, firefighters, paramedics, local police and the Guardia Civil.
The Spanish Government has sent 160 Guardia Civil officers from ten specialist branches, some of them working on the recovery of bodies.
