Twelve Dead and a Warning That Never Came: Why Andalusia Didn't Send an ES-Alert After the Fire

A wildfire near the village of Los Gallardos and the mountain village of Bédar in the Spanish province of Almería killed thirteen people. The identification of the victims is now complete — twelve of them were foreigners, seven of whom were British. The Andalusian regional government never sent residents a mobile ES-Alert warning, which can simultaneously reach every phone in an area under threat. The decision not to send the warning has become the core of a nationwide dispute over whether a single text alert could have saved lives — and what this means for Slovakia, where the same system is due to launch later this year.

🔴 Latest developments (July 13–15)

• 15.07.The identification of all thirteen victims is complete — twelve of them were foreigners. The only Spaniard among the dead is a man who died in the surrounding terrain; all the other victims were foreign residents. BFM TV ↗RFI ↗RTÉ ↗n-tv ↗
• 15.07.The British death toll has risen to seven. After families provided DNA samples, two more British women were added to the identified victims — meaning the United Kingdom lost more citizens in the fire than any other country. The Sun ↗La Libre ↗
• 15.07.Spain has just experienced its hottest first half of summer since records began — the backdrop against which this year's fire season is unfolding in the south of the country. RÚV ↗
• 14.07.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited firefighters and rescue workers deployed at the fire in Andalusia, which French media described as exceptionally deadly. According to the newspaper Le Monde, the fire has since been brought under control. France 24 ↗Le Monde ↗
• 13.07.The death toll has risen to thirteen — a 93-year-old British woman, one of the women injured in the fire, has died. ABC ↗El Español ↗
• 13.07.The number of missing has risen to ten. ABC ↗
• 13.07.The fire has exposed decades of illegal construction in the Sierra Cabrera mountains — which, according to ABC, complicated both the evacuation and firefighters' access. ABC ↗

What happened

The fire broke out in a landscape parched by heat in the afternoon hours of Thursday, July 9, and, driven by strong winds, spread overnight to approximately 7,000 hectares. NPR ↗

According to the reconstruction of the tragedy so far, four people, likely British, burned to death in a car just a few meters from the road. The remaining victims died in the surrounding terrain after attempting to escape on foot along a different route than the one designated by rescue teams. Spanish authorities have been confirming the identities of the dead through DNA analysis. ABC News ↗

The Guardia Civil is investigating the fall of an abandoned power cable as the probable cause, though no final conclusion has yet been reached. The companies Endesa and Red Eléctrica stated that the cable did not belong to them and was not live. El País ↗

Why no warning was issued

The Andalusian government, led by Junta president Juanma Moreno (People's Party), decided not to activate the ES-Alert. Antonio Sanz, vice-president of the Junta and the regional government's member responsible for the presidency, health, and emergencies, argued that a blanket message could have caused „great confusion" — some people were meant to evacuate while others were meant to shelter in place, and a single unified text could have sent some of them straight toward the fire. According to the government, this would have made the damage even worse. El Mundo ↗

Instead of the alert, authorities issued warnings via radio, local television, municipal social media accounts, and police megaphones. However, given the scattered settlements in the ravines and the language barrier, the warning did not reach everyone — many foreign residents did not understand the messages, which were in Spanish. Euro Weekly News ↗

The authorities' version disputed

The official version — that the victims failed to follow instructions — has been disputed by the family of one of them. Belgian virologist Thomas-Wolf Verdonckt spoke by phone with his father, 63-year-old businessman Stanislas Verdonckt, shortly before nine in the evening, as the fire approached Bédar. The son says that a group of neighbors first tried to flee along the main road, but the flames drove them back — according to him, no one had warned them in advance or told them which direction the fire was coming from. They then took a dead-end dirt track along the slope, got stuck, abandoned their cars, and died while trying to escape on foot. US News (Reuters) ↗

Criticism has also targeted preparedness. According to the newspaper eldiario.es, the fire caught the Andalusian government with „incomplete" firefighting crews, and unions point out that they had been warning about understaffing for some time. eldiario.es ↗

The newspaper La Vanguardia, meanwhile, writes about the failure of the municipality's emergency plan and about the chaotic construction of scattered settlements in the ravines, which multiplied the risk. La Vanguardia ↗

A Spanish dispute — with a Slovak echo

The case has also divided Spanish politics, and not along the expected lines. Transport Minister Óscar Puente (Socialists), together with his party's spokeswoman, criticized the regional government for not sending the ES-Alert. This, however, put his party colleague, Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with Parliament Félix Bolaños, in an unusual position — he defended the Andalusian government's decision as „technical" and refused to question it. Left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers thus read the same night in opposite ways: some see it as the consequence of cuts in the region, others as a defensible professional decision made under difficult conditions. ABC ↗

Spain has recent and painful experience with warnings. In the DANA-type floods in Valencia in October 2024, at least 229 people died, and the ES-Alert did not arrive until 8:11 p.m., by which time hundreds of people were already trapped — a judge repeatedly described it as „late and flawed." Almería is a mirror-image case: in Valencia the warning was late, in Almería it never came at all, and both regions are governed by the People's Party. eldiario.es ↗

The debate is not confined to Spain. ES-Alert is Spain's version of public warning under the European EU-Alert framework, which uses cell broadcast technology. The obligation for member states to have a public warning system was imposed by the European Electronic Communications Code (Directive 2018/1972), with a deadline for operation from June 2022. Protección Civil ↗

Slovakia is only just rolling out its equivalent — SK-Alert. According to the Ministry of Interior, the system is to be tested in the second half of 2026 and go into full operation by the end of the year, with the aim of warning about floods, fires, radiation accidents, or hazardous material leaks. The dispute in Almería is thus a preview of questions we too will soon face — when to press the button, how to target the message, and how to avoid causing panic instead of saving lives. Pravda ↗

What hotinfo is following

• The conclusion of the investigation into the cause of the fire (the abandoned power cable) and the possible liability of the line's operator.
• Whether the Spanish judiciary will open proceedings over the failure to send the ES-Alert, as it did in the case of the Valencia DANA.
• Reform of the ES-Alert protocol toward more precise geographic targeting and multilingual messages for foreign residents.
• The launch of Slovakia's SK-Alert (testing in the second half of 2026, full operation by the end of 2026) and the rules governing its activation.