At least eleven people, possibly including foreigners, were trapped in their car or caught fire as they tried to escape on foot in a tourist area near Almeria in southern Spain, victims of a raging forest fire.
The toll from the disaster, by far one of the worst in Spain’s recent history, could rise further as authorities are still searching for 19 people who have not been located.
The fire, which broke out late Thursday, was spreading “very quickly, with very strong winds and with extraordinary speed” through an area that included numerous ravines and houses scattered across the hillside, with topography making it especially difficult for firefighters to work.
“We currently have 11 people who died in two ways,” Antonio Sanz, emergency adviser for Andalusia, the region where the tragedy occurred, told the press.
“On one side, four people driving a car died,” and on the other, seven people who tried to escape on foot. Of their group of nine, “two managed to escape and seven died.”
– “Immeasurable sadness” –
According to Antonio Sanz, the victims trapped inside the car could have been British, judging by the position of the steering wheel (on the right), while the victims on foot “could also have been foreign, Belgian or British”.
According to Angel Francisco Collado, mayor of the village of Bedar where the victims were found, “some residents advised the group of nine people (who fled on foot) to take refuge in their homes. They did not listen to them and seven of them have died and the other two are heading to the hospital,” he also said.
Eight people were injured, four of them with serious burns, he added.
“Great sadness and despair in the face of the terrible consequences of the fire that engulfed the province of Almeria,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez responded to X.
According to eyewitnesses mentioned in the emergency report, the fire, which has already devastated more than 3,000 hectares, may have been caused by a broken power line near the N-340A national road.
The fire then spread to the forest environment, where “the intervention of fire fighting devices is really difficult because even machines cannot access it,” Antonio Sanz continued, referring to the “tragedy.”
“What worries us most tomorrow is the possibility of a change in the wind,” which could cause “the fire to restart,” the manager finally said.
In total, six hundred people were evacuated, and about 500 firefighters and soldiers were used to extinguish the fire, assisted by about twenty aircraft.
– Heat wave –
Dry vegetation, dry air and the amount of dry fuel available: the current heat wave in Spain, and especially in Andalusia, which has been declared an orange alert in recent days, has contributed to the development of fires in this hilly area.
A country on the front line of global warming, Spain has experienced increasingly longer heat waves in recent years, starting in spring and then summer, with temperatures sometimes exceeding 40C, creating conditions for devastating fires.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), fires burned more than 393,000 hectares in Spain in 2025, representing the worst fires in the country’s recent history.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these fires caused a total of more than 8,000 deaths, with eight people killed, 86 injured and more than 42,000 evacuated.
At the end of May, Pedro Sánchez assured that in the summer Spain would deploy the “most important” device ever used to fight fires.
Several fires have broken out in Spain in recent days. One of them, now under control, has devastated more than 2,000 hectares of Catalonia (northeast), just a few kilometers from the very touristic Costa Brava.
published July 10 at 12:03 pm, AFP