Seven foreigners, including four Britons and a French woman, are among the first identified victims of the fire in Andalusia, in the south of Spain, which cost the lives of at least 13 people, the authorities announced on Monday July 13. They remain cautious about the total number of missing until the autopsies of all the bodies found are completed, with six more remains to be identified.
“The first six identifications of victims of the Los Gallardos fire have been completed,” announced in a press release the public entity in charge of body identification (CID), speaking of three British people, a French woman, a Belgian and a Spaniard. This toll comes in addition to the death of a 93-year-old British national who died of her injuries in hospital on Sunday, bringing to four the number of Britons killed at this stage in the fire.
In addition to these 13 deaths, other potential victims remain unknown, even if research over the last few days has yielded nothing, according to the authorities. Earlier on Monday, the CID indicated on Monday that it had received “10 reports” from families looking for loved ones. This figure could increase, he warned.
“The climate is changing”
A country on the front line of global warming, Spain has experienced increasingly long and frequent heat waves in recent years, with temperatures well above 40°C, creating conditions favorable to devastating fires.
Thursday, after an electric cable fell along a road, flames ravaged 7,000 hectares in a wooded area near the Mediterranean, moving at a destructive rate of around 100 meters per minute and killing 13 people. The fire left a landscape of devastation, with many charred car wrecks on the roads.
Traveling Monday to the scene of the fire, one of the deadliest in recent Spanish history, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged the population to be more aware and to act before forest fires: “We must not only react when these fires occur, but we must also prevent.”
Last year, “a third of the total area burned in Europe” was in Spain, he recalled in a serious tone. “Each of us, as individuals, must realize that the climate is changing, that the effects of the climate emergency are worsening,” he continued, warning of “a complicated summer” to come.
This year, Spain has already experienced two heat waves, sparing almost no area of the country, after a month of June which proved to be the second hottest since records began, according to the National Meteorological Agency (Aemet).
Nearly 400,000 hectares burned in 2025
From the emergency command center, Andalusian regional president Juan Manuel Moreno also called on Spaniards to be proactive and “alert in case of smoke”. He also called for being “vigilant in the face of suspicious behavior when a person may behave like an arsonist” and mentioned the implementation of training at school on good reflexes in the event of a fire.
A charred car in an area affected by a deadly forest fire in Almocaizar, Almería province, July 12, 2026 in Spain.
Jose JORDAN / AFP
The region he heads has in recent days come under criticism from certain families of the victims who deplore their inaction just before and at the time of the disaster. In Spain, responsibility for combating disasters lies primarily with the autonomous communities, but the central state in Madrid can be called upon and intervene when the situation worsens. On Sunday, after three terrible days, the fire was stabilized, allowing the 1,500 evacuees to return home.
At the end of May, Pedro Sanchez assured that Spain would deploy during the summer “the most important” device ever mobilized against fires in the face of “a threat (which) continues to grow”, without detailing the financial resources allocated.
In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were ravaged by flames, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), the worst toll in recent Spanish history.
