12 killed in Spain wildfire as heatwave fuels fast-moving blaze

A wildfire in the Los Gallardos and Bedar area of Almería province killed at least 12 people and injured six as it raced through dry vegetation and surrounding woodland in searing heat. The first reports reached authorities at about 5:00 p.m. local time on Thursday, when temperatures were nearing 40C and roads in the area began closing as residents were evacuated.

Some of the dead were found inside vehicles, a detail that raises hard questions about whether evacuation orders came too late for people caught on narrow roads or moving too slowly through the fire’s path. About 50 people were sheltered in a cultural centre as crews worked to clear homes and nearby hamlets, while emergency teams tried to keep the blaze from overtaking more terrain in the rugged southern Spanish landscape.

About 150 firefighters, backed by five fire trucks, were deployed, and Spain’s Military Emergency Unit, known as the UME, was expected to join the response. Antonio Sanz, the regional emergency chief, called the blaze “an unprecedented tragedy” and “the most devastating fire to date in our region.” The scale of the response, and the fact that the fire still left a deadly toll within hours, points to a familiar bottleneck in fast wildfires: once wind, heat and dry fuel line up, even a substantial ground deployment can struggle to keep pace.

Witnesses told authorities that a fallen power line may have sparked the fire, but the cause had not been confirmed. That uncertainty matters because southern Spain has spent much of the summer under intense heat-related warnings. AEMET said Spain’s June 2026 temperatures were 3.2C above normal, making it the country’s second-hottest June on record, while European forecasters have warned that heat waves across the continent are pushing wildfire behavior faster and farther than many local systems were built to handle.

The blaze in Almería arrived after Pedro Sánchez said in May that Spain had launched its largest-ever state deployment for a wildfire campaign, following a 2025 fire season that burned nearly 400,000 hectares. Juanma Moreno and Sánchez both expressed condolences after the deaths in Andalusia, but the fire’s speed has already put the region’s warning, evacuation and response systems under scrutiny as another southern European fire emergency unfolded this week in France.