A Wildfire Killed 12 People in Southern Spain. Here's the Latest.

On a coastal highway in southern Spain, a wildfire jumped the road so fast that four people died inside a single burnt-out car, and seven more died on foot, trying to escape through a dry riverbed.

What happened on the N-340

The fire ignited on the afternoon of Thursday, 9 July 2026, near the N-340 highway in the municipality of Los Gallardos, in Almería province, in the Andalusia region of southern Spain. Within hours it had crossed the road, run uphill through dry scrub, and spread overnight into the neighbouring hamlet of Bédar and into rural communities around Lubrín, in the semi-arid Sierra de Los Filabres. Two major Almería highways, including stretches of the N-340 itself, were closed for hours because of heavy smoke.

The N-340 was where the human toll clustered. Four people died inside a single burnt-out vehicle on the highway. Seven more died on foot after abandoning their cars and running toward a dry riverbed that they appear to have believed offered shelter. Antonio Sanz, president of Andalusia's emergency services, said several victims died after ignoring shelter-in-place orders and trying to flee, and that some escaped into a dry riverbed that "turned into a death trap." As of 11 July, twelve people were confirmed dead. Eight more were injured. Twenty-three people were still reported missing as of 10 July 2026, and that figure had not been fully resolved when regional officials briefed reporters the next day.

The area around Los Gallardos is a well-known expat community, and most of the confirmed victims were foreign nationals rather than Spanish residents. Regional emergency services said at least four of the confirmed dead were British, identified in part by right-hand-drive steering wheels in the burnt-out vehicles on the N-340. Several other victims were Belgian nationals. Officials have not released names.

The weather that made the fuel

Almería sits on Spain's southeastern coast, a semi-arid stretch of coast and mountain where hillside villages like Los Gallardos, Bédar and Lubrín are surrounded by dry pine, scrub and terraced farmland. In the first week of July 2026, the region was in the middle of a severe Western European heat wave. On 9 July, the day the fire ignited, the Spanish Meteorological Agency AEMET had issued a maximum-temperature warning for parts of Almería, covering the Valle del Almanzora and Los Vélez districts near the fire zone, with a peak of 41°C. That same day, Barcelona reached 40.5°C.

Juan Manuel Moreno, the regional leader of Andalusia, said everything on the ground was extremely dry because of the heat waves, calling it "the perfect fuel; combined with the wind, it's a ticking time bomb." Authorities suspect a fallen power line initially sparked the dry brush near the highway. The local utility Endesa has disputed that its lines were the source, and the ignition cause remains formally under investigation. What is not in dispute is the state of the vegetation the fire ran through. By the time crews reached the ridgelines above the N-340, the fuel had been curing under weeks of heat.

The response, and the brief opening

By 11 July 2026, the fire had grown to roughly 6,600 hectares, about 16,000 acres of forest and farmland, up from an initial 3,200-hectare estimate reported on 10 July. Approximately 1,448 residents were evacuated from Los Gallardos, Bédar, Lubrín and surrounding hamlets, and around 50 evacuated residents were sheltered in a local cultural centre.

The perimeter is enormous, and so was the response committed to it. Around 150 firefighters and 220 soldiers from Spain's Military Emergency Unit, known as the UME, were deployed on the ground. The response fleet included roughly 30 aircraft, 12 fire engines, 2 water tankers and 124 support vehicles working across the fire's edge.

That effort had one measurable break. Firefighters reported a brief "window of opportunity" on 11 July when winds weakened and relative humidity climbed toward 50%, allowing them to reinforce containment lines. Antonio Sanz used the same phrase publicly. It was, in his framing, a chance rather than a turning point. As of 11 July, the fire was neither contained nor extinguished, and the region was bracing for more heat.

What the government said

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the country felt "immense sadness and desolation in the face of the terrible consequences of the fire affecting the province of Almería." At the regional level, Antonio Sanz called the blaze "the most devastating fire to date in our region" and "an unprecedented tragedy" for Andalusia.

Those two lines, from the head of the national government and from the regional emergency lead, capture the political register of the response. There is no public argument yet about preparedness, no formal blame assigned for the ignition, and no move to name individual victims. What officials have chosen to emphasise instead is scale and precedent. The Los Gallardos fire is now Andalusia's deadliest wildfire on record, and at twelve confirmed deaths, one of the three deadliest wildfires in Spanish history.

The number that puts this in context

The single most telling figure sits outside Almería. Spain's 2025 fire season burned more than 393,000 hectares of land, roughly twice the area of London, but killed only four people across the entire year. The Los Gallardos fire tripled that death toll in one blaze. That is why regional officials are treating this event as a category shift rather than a bad week.

There is one earlier event that Andalusia officials have invoked directly. In June 2017, the Pedrógão Grande fire in central Portugal killed 66 people, including 47 who died on one road trying to flee in their cars. Almería officials say the pattern was echoed on the N-340 this week, where the deaths clustered inside and immediately outside vehicles caught by a fire front moving faster than drivers could react. Pedrógão Grande remains the region's benchmark for catastrophic wildfire loss. What happened on the N-340 is being read against it.

The unresolved pieces are the ones that will shape the next several days. Twenty-three people are still unaccounted for. The cause is still formally under investigation, with Endesa contesting the initial power-line theory. Roughly 1,448 residents are still displaced, some of them in a local cultural centre. Around 150 firefighters and 220 UME soldiers are still working the perimeter of a 6,600-hectare burn scar under forecasts that promise more heat, not relief. The window that opened on 11 July was, in the words of the man running the response, a window. It has not closed the fire.

Sources

• Andalusia regional government, emergency services briefings (attributed to Antonio Sanz)
• Government of Spain, statement by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
• AEMET, Spanish Meteorological Agency, maximum-temperature warnings for Andalusia, 9 July 2026
• Spain's Military Emergency Unit (UME), deployment updates