Pete and Fran Gillam, a British couple living in Bédar in Almería province, have been confirmed dead in the wildfires sweeping southeastern Spain. Their daughter Danielle Gillam-Kirton announced the confirmation on Facebook after police verified that her parents did not survive The Guardian. Spanish authorities confirmed them among the first victims formally identified on Monday, part of a death toll that has now reached 13.

The Gillams lost contact with their daughter by text message during the evacuation of Bédar, according to reporting by The Sun and Sky News, which put the number of unaccounted for at 23 as of Sunday. Gillam-Kirton had appealed for information on expatriate Facebook groups in the days before confirmation, a post noted by the Spanish outlet Sur in English, which reported that specialists were 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 identified. Also confirmed dead on Monday were a Spanish man and his British wife, along with nationals from the US, France, and Belgium. Andalusian regional authorities separately confirmed that a 93-year-old British woman injured in the blaze died in hospital, bringing the confirmed toll to 13. Officials said 10 formal missing-persons reports had been filed as of Sunday, a figure below the 23 unaccounted for reported by Sky News the previous day. The gap reflects how long formal reporting takes to catch up with informal appeals rather than any resolution of those missing.

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

A distinct case briefly ran parallel to the search for the Gillams. 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 apparently having been out hiking when the fire overtook them — is separate from the Gillams, who lived in Bédar. That couple suffered burns covering 40% of their bodies and were airlifted to hospital in a rescue operation lasting roughly two hours, according to The Guardian's July 12 report. Guardia Civil Sergeant 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 condition update accompanied Monday's fatality figures.

The scale of the emergency response shows how quickly the fire spread beyond control. At least 1,400 people were evacuated from homes in the area, and more than 500 firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed. 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 before 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 compared 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, a pattern that reflects 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, complicated the identification effort. Authorities have had to cross-reference informal missing-persons appeals on social media against formal police reports, DNA records, and consular notifications from the UK, Belgium, France, and the US simultaneously. That confirmed fatalities and formal missing-persons filings do not yet align with earlier informal estimates points to the possibility that the final death toll may shift as forensic work continues in Madrid.