Spain's deadliest fire of the century has claimed the lives of 12 people, with a further 23 still missing in Almeria

Almeria fire

Spain's deadliest fire of the century has claimed the lives of 12 people, with a further 23 still missing in Almeria

The victims, most of them foreign nationals, were trapped while fleeing the flames, which spread rapidly across the countryside

Añádenos en Google Two burnt-out cars at the scene in Los Gallardos (Almeria). (EP / Javi Carrión)

Miguel Cárceles and Nerea Escámez

Almeria

10/07/2026 Actualizado a las 22:02h.

It was 4.37pm on Thursday when the first call came in to the emergency control centre. A fire had broken out in the Los ... Gallardos area of Almeria province, but there was no indication of the scale the incident was to reach.

This marked the start of the third deadliest fire in Spain’s history and the worst in Andalucía’s memory .

On Friday evening some 23 people were still unaccounted for, which is one of the main causes for concern. Rescue workers are trying to gain access to the houses burnt down by the fire “to see what we find”, added the Andalusian regional president.

Moreno has emphasised the need for caution regarding those missing. “It does not mean they are dead; sometimes they are simply in other areas and have not yet been identified,” he explained.

Spreading

On Thursday evening after the initial reports concern began to spread among residents of the Almeria municipalities of Los Gallardos and Bédar, who began to see the flames spreading rapidly and the black smoke approaching their homes. Vera, Mojácar, Garrucha and even Águilas watched from a distance as a hellish scene unfolded.

The deployment of around fifty firefighters to tackle the blaze began to be spread across different areas to stabilise the flames, which had reached various locations with dense scrubland.

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    Some of the teams evacuated at least 50 residents from El Marchal, in Lubrín, to keep them safe from the fierce fire raging in the area. The Guardia Civil’s major disaster response team from the forensic service was also deployed to the scene to identify the bodies, along with the Reserve and Security Group and public safety and traffic patrols, according to a statement from the Guardia Civil.

    On Friday, the Guardia Civil’s mountain unit ventured into a hard-to-reach ravine in Bédar to attempt to recover bodies, according to sources close to the investigation, although no details have yet been released regarding the outcome of the rescue operations or the number of bodies found at that location within the municipality.

    Throughout, the authorities have emphasised that one of the main objectives is to identify the victims and locate those who have not yet been found, as, as of Thursday afternoon, only two missing person reports had been filed.

    For this reason, DNA sampling will be crucial to the process. To facilitate this, a reporting centre has been set up at the Guardia Civil station in Garrucha for relatives who are unable to locate their loved ones.

    An appeal was therefore made to the immediate family members of those not yet found to visit one of these offices in order to speed up the identification process.

    As of late on Friday, the plan was to keep the command centre operational until Sunday at the Levante Almeriense fire station.