British couple named among 13 killed in Spanish wildfires
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- Pete and Fran Gillam, British expatriates who lived in Bédar, were confirmed dead by their daughter Danielle Gillam-Kirton in a Facebook post after the couple went missing during Thursday's evacuation.
- Spanish authorities confirmed 13 deaths — five British nationals, three Belgians, one French woman and one Spanish man — and asked relatives to provide DNA samples because most victims were burned beyond visual recognition.
- Penelope Howe recounted that one British man died in his car while rescuing his cats near Los Gallardos; his wife spoke to him on the phone as flames engulfed the vehicle.
- Juanma Moreno, leader of Andalucía's regional government, called the conditions "climate chaos," citing the relentless heatwave scorching Europe and fueling fires across the Iberian peninsula and into France.
- Bédar was described as the village that bore the brunt of the blaze, with burned-out cars littering the exit road and some victims dying in their vehicles while attempting to flee.
- Gillam-Kirton said her mother texted at about 7pm Thursday to say the couple were evacuating; messages and calls to both parents failed afterward.
Why it matters: The fire killed 13 people — at least five British — in a village popular with British expatriates, demonstrating how quickly the heatwave-fueled blaze rendered victims unrecognizable and forced DNA-based identification. The death toll and the account of a man dying on the phone with his wife while trapped in a car with rescued pets crystallize the human cost of climate-intensified wildfires across southern Europe.
