Seven Brits have been confirmed to have died in the deadly wildfire that swept through Andalusia in southern Spain, with one victim feared to be a woman who bought her home on ‘A Place In The Sun‘.
Twelve of the 13 victims of the blaze were foreign nationals, the authorities said on Tuesday after completing post-mortem examinations.
In a statement, officials said seven were from the United Kingdom, three from Belgium, and one each from France and the United States. The last victim was a Spanish citizen.
Annette Kilgore, who appeared on the Channel 4 reality show, is feared to be among the Brits who died after she became separated from her husband amid the inferno.
The 69-year-old lived in the village of Bédar with her husband Malcolm Timbrell, 70, after the couple moved there from Cornwall following their appearance on the hit series in 2023.
Bédar, a municipality of the Almería province in the south, was ravaged by flames last Thursday in one of Spain’s deadliest fires in recent years.
Timbrell recounted how he had become separated from his wife and seven of their friends and neighbours as the flames raced towards their idyllic home.
‘We have had an amazing life together and now it’s stopped,’ the heartbroken husband told the BBC.
The couple have been together for 17 years.
Malcolm Timbrell, 70, with his wife Annette Kilgore, 69, who is feared to be among the seven British victims of the wildfire in southern Spain
Harrowing photographs show how British wildfire victims ran out of road while fleeing down dirt tracks to escape a deadly blaze in Spain
Firefighters of the Infoca (Andalusia Wildfire Service) work to extinguish fire in the area of a wildfire that killed at least 13 near Bedar, in Los Gallardos district, in Almeria Province, July 10
‘If we had done the sensible thing and gone the other way and let our cats die, we both would be alive. But when you’ve got animals, you don’t think like that,’ he added.
‘We are just waiting now for DNA clarification. And after that, I will probably just fall apart,’ he said.
The couple had decided to flee the scene by car, but Timbrell went back to their home to save their two beloved cats, Charlie and Misty.
When he attempted to catch up to his wife and their friends, he realised they had ditched the cars and were trying to escape the flames on foot.
‘My wife and our other seven friends and neighbours – against me screaming at them not to – decided the only safe way was to walk out in front of the firewall.
‘I’ve subsequently heard that the firewall was moving at 20 kilometres an hour [12mph] plus. They had no chance.’
He and one of the cats hid in one of the vehicles as the blaze raged on.
‘Of the six cars, four of them instantly combusted and as each one started to go, I moved back one car,’ he said.
‘For some reason of fate, the last two cars, although very, very badly singed and paint bubbled and burnt, survived. And I survived inside the last one with a cat.’
‘You’d never imagine it could happen,’ he said. ‘And when it does, and you’re the only survivor, then you’re left in a situation of: “What can I do?”‘
‘A Place in the Sun’ presenter Leah Charles-King helped the couple buy their dream home in Spain three years ago, with Kilgore telling the host at the beginning of their episode that she wanted to ease into the Spanish way of life after retiring from many years working in mental health.
‘We’ve started kayaking, which is great fun. I haven’t fallen in. I now know that I don’t panic when I fall in, so that’s a good thing,’ she said back in 2023.
Describing why they picked Almeria, Kilgore said: ‘It’s not as commercialised, it’s a smaller area of villages, so it just seemed the perfect place.’
She continued: ‘So, to sit and have a glass of wine in our own property that we’ve thought about for so long and just have that lovely feeling: “This is ours, we’ve done it.”‘
‘It will extend our adventure,’ Timbrell added.
While the stone cottage was on the market for £215,746 at the time of filming, the couple ended up purchasing it for £200,000.
After confirming the sale, Timbrell said: ‘I couldn’t be happier at the moment.’
His wife added: ‘We’ve just bought that Spanish beautiful stone cottage up on the top of a mountain. And that isn’t what we came for? It’s what we’ve bought, because it’s what we fell in love with.’
‘We have had an amazing life together and now it’s stopped,’ heartbroken Malcolm Timbrell told the BBC
Firefighters working on the wildfire, which has ravaged homes and claimed several lives
The wild fire is one of Spain’s deadliest, with extreme heat causing them to become more frequent in recent years
Fran Gillam, who lived in Bédar, was among the 13 people killed, her daughter confirmed
Fran’s husband, Pete, was also killed in the deadly blaze that swept through southern Spain
‘The 13 people who died are eight women and five men, all adults,’ the public body responsible for identifying the victims added.
The picturesque southeastern province of Almeria is home to many foreign residents near the Mediterranean coast.
Pete and Fran Gillam, who also lived in Bédar, were among the 13 people killed in the blaze, the couple’s daughter confirmed in a social media post.
The couple disappeared on Thursday, after Fran texted her daughter Danielle Gillam-Kirton to confirm they were evacuating.
That text, sent at about 7pm Thursday, was the last time Danielle would hear from her parents before communication was cut off, with frantic messages and calls to them failing to connect.
In a heartbreaking update shared on social media, Ms Gillam-Kirton confirmed the devastating news: ‘We are heartbroken to share that we have received confirmation from the police that Mum and Dad did not survive the fire.
‘Thank you for all your love, support and prayers over the past few days. They have meant more to us than we can ever express.’
Flames fanned by high winds ripped through forests and scrubland made tinderbox dry by extreme high temperatures, turning picturesque rural settlements into ghost towns.
Emergency services initially recovered 12 bodies that were so badly burned that DNA samples were needed to identify them.
The fire, one of Spain’s deadliest in recent years and caused by an electrical cable falling on a road, devastated some 7,000 hectares (more than 17,000 acres) of land.
The fire has since been brought under control and residents have been able to return to their homes since Sunday.
Spain has in recent years experienced increasingly long and frequent heatwaves, with temperatures exceeding 40C, creating perfect conditions for wildfires.
In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were destroyed by fire, according to the European Forest Fire Information System – the most in Spain’s recent history.
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