Pete and Fran Gillam, a British couple who lived in Bédar in Almería province, have been confirmed dead in the wildfires that have swept southeastern Spain, their daughter Danielle Gillam-Kirton said in a Facebook post reporting that police had confirmed her parents did not survive The Guardian. Spanish authorities confirmed the couple among the first victims formally identified on Monday, part of a death toll that has now reached 13.

The Gillams had last been in contact with their daughter by text message before losing contact during the evacuation of Bédar, according to earlier reporting by The Sun and Sky News, which put the number of people unaccounted for at 23 as of Sunday. Gillam-Kirton had appealed for information on expatriate Facebook groups over the preceding days, a post also noted by the Spanish outlet Sur in English, which reported specialists working through Sunday to identify bodies recovered from the Los Gallardos fire.

Twelve bodies were recovered at the fire's centre, and the Gillams were among the first of those identified. Also confirmed dead on Monday were a Spanish man and his British wife, along with one national each from the US, France and Belgium. Andalusian regional authorities separately confirmed that a 93-year-old British woman injured in the blaze had died in hospital, bringing the confirmed toll to 13. Officials coordinating the identification effort said 10 formal missing-persons reports had been filed as of Sunday, a figure that sits below the 23 unaccounted for reported by Sky News the previous day — a gap that reflects the pace at which formal reports are catching up with informal appeals rather than any resolution of the discrepancy.

Authorities said several of the dead had been trapped in their vehicles on the road out of Bédar as they tried to flee, burning alive as the fire overtook the evacuation route. At least four more British victims were considered likely after bodies were found in the burnt-out shell of a right-hand-drive Honda Accord. Separately, a British man died in his car in Los Gallardos while attempting to rescue his pets during the evacuation, according to an account given by a friend to reporters. Many of the bodies were burned badly enough that visual identification was impossible; forensic scientists in Madrid have been working with DNA samples taken from remains and cheek swabs from relatives of the missing, submitted at the area's civil registry office, to confirm identities.

The confirmed deaths of the Gillams follow a separate case that briefly ran parallel to the search for them. A British couple found badly burned and semi-conscious in a ravine near the fire zone — reported by Reuters as "visiting Almeria on holiday" and by the Guardian as having apparently been out hiking when the fire overtook them — is distinct from the Gillams, who lived locally in Bédar. That couple suffered burns covering 40% of their bodies and were airlifted to hospital in a rescue operation that took roughly two hours, according to The Guardian's July 12 report. Guardia Civil Sgt Pedro Barre and officer Rafael Zea, two of the three officers involved in locating the pair, described the operation to Spain's state broadcaster TVE. As of Sunday the couple remained in intensive care; no update on their condition accompanied Monday's fatality figures.

The scale of the emergency response gives some sense of how quickly the fire outran containment efforts. At least 1,400 people were evacuated from homes in the area, and more than 500 firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed against the blaze. Andalusia's regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, said Sunday that the fire had been contained and its perimeter secured, crediting easing winds that allowed crews to gain the upper hand on Saturday after days of difficulty. He described the conditions preceding the fire — dry ground, high winds, and heatwave temperatures he attributed to the broader climate crisis — as having made the region a "ticking timebomb," and officials likened the scorched landscape to the aftermath of a bomb blast.

Most of those killed are thought to be British and Belgian nationals, alongside one Spaniard, reflecting Almería's substantial population of foreign residents and holidaymakers concentrated in towns like Bédar. The presence of both long-term expatriate residents, such as the Gillams, and tourists caught mid-holiday, such as the couple found in the ravine, has complicated the identification effort: authorities have had to cross-reference informal missing-persons appeals circulated on social media against formal police reports, DNA records, and consular notifications from the UK, Belgium, France and the US simultaneously. That the total of confirmed fatalities and the tally of formal missing-persons filings do not yet align with earlier informal estimates suggests the final death toll may still move as forensic work continues in Madrid.