Spain Wildfire: 12 Dead and 23 Missing in Devastating Almería Blaze

ALMERÍA — A wildfire that tore through a remote expat community in southern Spain on Thursday night has killed at least 12 people and left 23 others missing, making it the deadliest wildfire in Andalusia’s recorded history and one of the worst in the country in decades. The blaze broke out Thursday afternoon near the N-340 highway in Los Gallardos in Almería province, with strong winds quickly fanning the flames into the neighbouring municipality of Bédar — a quiet whitewashed village popular with older foreign nationals seeking a slower life away from the nearby beach resorts.

Many of the deaths appear to have occurred because people chose to evacuate in their cars against the advice of local mayors and police, who went door-to-door asking residents to stay put. The village itself largely escaped the flames — but those who fled in vehicles drove directly into them. Seven people died while on foot after abandoning their cars, while four people believed to be British were found dead in a single burnt-out vehicle with a right-hand steering wheel. Four seriously injured people were airlifted to Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville, while four others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

Andalusia’s emergencies minister Antonio Sanz said the fire spread extremely rapidly through the wooded terrain, and that most or all of the victims appeared to be foreign nationals. He described it as “the most devastating fire to date in our region” and called the deaths “an unprecedented tragedy.” “The pain is immense,” he said. The Andalusian regional government declared three days of official mourning, with flags flown at half-mast across the region.

Around 500 firefighters backed by Spain’s Military Emergency Unit were battling the blaze, which had consumed more than 3,200 hectares of forest and farmland by Friday afternoon, with officials warning it could take several more days to bring fully under control given the rugged, steep terrain. The cause remains under investigation — witnesses reported a downed power line started the fire, but electricity provider Endesa denied the claim, saying the line in question was inactive and did not belong to them.

The disaster is the sharpest single illustration yet of what Europe’s escalating climate crisis looks like on the ground. Spain recorded 1,028 heat-related deaths in 2026 alone, Barcelona set a new heat record with temperatures of 40.5°C, and Europe as a continent is warming twice as fast as the global average according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Early summer heatwaves across Western Europe in May and June parched vast areas of land, leaving them acutely vulnerable to exactly the kind of fast-moving fire that struck Bédar. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who earlier this year announced the country’s largest-ever summer wildfire response, expressed “enormous sadness and devastation” and urged residents to follow official guidance as search operations continued.

For the expat community in Bédar specifically, the loss is devastating. The village’s parish priest described most of the foreign residents as older people who had found “a haven of peace” in the isolated countryside — people who, by the accounts emerging from the disaster, may not have received clear enough guidance about what to do when fire arrived faster than anyone expected.