The wildfire that tore through Almeria province in southern Spain has been declared stabilised, five days after it broke out and became the deadliest fire in Andalusia’s history.
The death toll has risen to 13 after a 93-year-old British woman who was injured in the blaze died in hospital on Sunday, regional authorities said. It ranks as the third deadliest wildfire in Spain’s history.
The fire began at around 4.37pm on Thursday 9 July in the Los Gallardos area, when the first emergency call reached the regional control centre. It spread rapidly through dry scrubland toward the hamlet of Bedar, fanned by strong winds and extreme heat.
By Thursday evening, concern was already spreading among residents of Los Gallardos and Bedar as flames and black smoke closed in on their homes. Nearby towns including Vera, Mojacar, Garrucha and Aguilas watched from a distance as the fire grew.
Spain is battling a deadly wildfire in Los Gallardos, near Almeria, where at least 11 people had died by 10 July after flames swept through a semi-arid area near the Sierra de los Filabres. pic.twitter.com/gfqkLFsnxa
— NoComment (@nocomment) July 13, 2026
The Andalusian regional government activated Emergency Phase 1 that evening and ordered a precautionary evacuation of residents near Bedar. The alert was raised to Phase 2 within hours as the scale of the fire became clear and evacuees with burns began arriving at Torrecardenas Hospital.
The Military Emergency Unit was deployed alongside Plan Infoca, the regional fire service and the Civil Guard, bringing the number of military personnel on the ground to 150. At the height of the operation, more than 460 emergency workers, 124 vehicles and dozens of aircraft were involved in the firefight.
Most of those who died were caught while trying to flee the flames in their vehicles after leaving designated shelter areas, authorities said. All but one of the 13 victims were foreign nationals, including at least four Britons and several Belgians.
“It was a death trap,” said Antonio Sanz, Regional Minister for Emergencies, describing how some residents abandoned official evacuation routes in a desperate attempt to outrun the fire. Other victims were found on foot nearby, having apparently left their cars to try to climb higher ground.
Four people with serious injuries were airlifted to the Virgen del Rocio Hospital in Seville, while several others were treated at the scene for less serious injuries. At the peak of the crisis, authorities said as many as 23 people were unaccounted for, although the interior ministry later said only a small number of formal missing person reports had been filed, with some of those unaccounted for believed to have reached shelters without making contact.
Juanma Moreno, President of the Regional Government of Andalusia, urged caution over the missing figures at the time. “It does not mean they are dead, sometimes they are simply in other areas and have not yet been identified,” he said.
Conditions began to improve over the weekend as winds eased and humidity rose, giving firefighters what officials called a window of opportunity to move from containment to a direct attack on the flames. Crews worked through Saturday night into Sunday, extinguishing flare-ups and reinforcing the fire perimeter with drones and heavy machinery.
The fire had burned around 7,000 hectares by Sunday. On Sunday, Moreno announced on social media that Plan Infoca had declared the fire stabilised, writing that after very tough days the blaze was now perimetered and contained.
The emergency response has since been downgraded to operational level 1, allowing more than 600 residents to return home to the areas of Los Castanos, Almocaizar, Alfaix and the Los Gallardos campsite. Around 500 personnel, including local firefighters and officers from the Civil Guard, National Police, BRIF and Infoca, remain deployed to monitor for further flare-ups.
Officials have not formally confirmed the cause of the fire, though local sources have pointed to a fallen power line as a possible trigger. Electricity provider Endesa has denied responsibility, saying the line in question was inactive and did not belong to the company.
A reporting centre remains open at the Guardia Civil station in Garrucha, where DNA sampling is being used to help identify victims. Relatives who have been unable to locate loved ones have been asked to visit in person to speed up the process.
Moreno has warned that further destructive wildfires could follow as summer temperatures continue to rise across Spain, noting that Andalusia has recorded an average of 15 fire outbreaks a day in recent months. He said climate change had created increasingly complex and at times uncontrollable fire conditions unlike anything the region had previously experienced.
