A wildfire in southern Spain killed at least 12 people on July 9, 2026 and left 23 others unaccounted for after racing through dry land in Almería during a severe summer heatwave. The Guardian report said the fire started on Thursday afternoon near Bédar, in the municipality of Los Gallardos, and spread so quickly that officials were still trying to work out how many people had been caught by it.
Andalucía’s regional government said four of the dead were believed to be British nationals, though identification was still underway. Eight people were hurt, including four in serious condition. Roughly 800 residents were evacuated, and nearly 200 of them were placed in shelters. The blaze did not ultimately reach Bédar, but some people who tried to escape through a ravine ended up on the wrong route and were overtaken by the fire.
Emergency minister Antonio Sanz described the blaze as extremely difficult to fight. He said the fire was spreading rapidly and that the terrain was making it hard to bring in large firefighting machinery. By Friday morning, 150 firefighters were on the scene and 220 members of Spain’s military emergencies unit were being sent to help. Officials were also asking relatives to come forward so that DNA samples could be taken and the missing could be identified more quickly.
The weather set the conditions for the disaster. The report said the landscape was very dry because of the heat, and regional president Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla called the blaze one of the fastest and most complex in recent years. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed condolences and urged people to take extra care. The political argument that followed over who should have done more did not change the basic picture on the ground: large evacuation, hard access for crews and a race to find the missing before the fire spread any farther. The heat and wind also made every effort more difficult.
Authorities suspected a fallen power line may have started the blaze, but that was not confirmed in the supplied excerpt. The report also said the fire revived debate over emergency alerts and firefighting resources in Spain. That wider political dispute mattered, but the immediate human story was the same: families displaced, responders stretched and an area already weakened by heat and dryness. The fire therefore became both a rescue operation and a test of regional preparedness.
The event showed how quickly a fire can turn a dry landscape into a fatal trap when wind, temperature and terrain line up in the wrong way. In Almería, the combination proved deadly before crews could bring it under control.
