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In July 2026, the Los Gallardos fire in Almería became the deadliest wildfire in Andalucía’s recorded history. Most of the dead were foreign residents. The official instructions that night travelled door to door, in Spanish, and the escape routes people improvised instead proved lethal. Whatever the inquiries eventually conclude, one thing is already clear: the wildfire protocol that governs every hillside on the Costa del Sol exists almost entirely in Spanish, and understanding it in advance is not a language nicety. It is safety equipment.
This guide is the protocol in English: the three instructions you can be given, who gives them, how warnings actually arrive, what to do in each case, and what your own town has in place. It is general information, current as of July 2026. In any live emergency, instructions from 112 and emergency services override everything written here.
The three instructions
Andalucía’s wildfire emergency plan (Plan INFOCA, the framework in force since 2010) defines three population-protection measures. English coverage usually mentions two; there are three.
- Evacuación (evacuation): leaving the emergency zone entirely, by the route authorities give you. Not the route you know, the route they give you: roads you would choose on a normal day can be exactly where the fire is going.
- Confinamiento (shelter in place): the planned sheltering of the affected population in a safe location, usually your own house. The plan’s own definition matters: it is a planned protective action, chosen because a prepared building can protect you better than an exposed road, not a fallback for people who missed the exit.
- Alejamiento (moving away): the middle measure, moving from exposed positions to safe places nearby, on foot and fast, without a full evacuation.
The single most dangerous thing you can do is invent a fourth option: fleeing late, by car, on a route nobody gave you. At Pedrógão Grande in Portugal in 2017, 47 people died on one road trying to outrun a fire that was moving at up to 15 kilometres per hour. At Los Gallardos, four people died in a car in a dry riverbed and seven more on foot after abandoning their cars. Fire moves faster than traffic on rural roads, and smoke removes the visibility you would need to drive out of it.
Who decides, and who tells you
The order to confine, move, or evacuate comes from the emergency plan’s direction (at province level, a senior Junta official) on the advice of the technical command at the fire, or directly from your mayor, who under the plan can order it on their own responsibility. On the ground, the order is executed by the Grupo de Seguridad — Guardia Civil, national and local police. In immediate danger to homes, the security commander at the scene can order protection measures first and notify upward afterwards.
Two practical consequences. First, a Policía Local officer or Guardia Civil knocking on your door during a fire IS the official channel, not a suggestion; the plan’s first-line warning tools are police megaphones and door-to-door notice, then local radio. Second, that channel operates in Spanish. If someone in uniform, or a neighbor relaying for them, tells you salgan (get out) or quédense dentro (stay inside), that is the instruction. Do not lose minutes seeking a translation of it.
The phone alert layer, ES-Alert, can reach every handset in the fire zone with an unmissable siren tone, but it is a per-incident decision by the regional emergency centre, and at Los Gallardos it was deliberately not used; authorities said instructions varied too much from one settlement to the next for one mass message. Our ES-Alert setup guide covers the sixty seconds of phone settings worth doing today and the backup channels for when no alert comes.
If the instruction is confinamiento
From the Junta’s official self-protection guidance, in order:
- Stay inside only because authorities have said so, or because the fire is already close enough that leaving is more dangerous than staying.
- Seal the openings: close windows and doors, lower the persianas (roller shutters).
- Turn off gas and air conditioning.
- Fill bathtubs, sinks, and buckets with water; wet down threatened exterior areas if there is time.
- Move flammable furniture to the centre of rooms, away from windows.
- Keep the family together in the most protected room, away from the fire-facing façade.
- Switch exterior lights ON, so emergency crews can locate the house through smoke.
- Call 112, tell them where you are and that you are confined, and follow what they say. The service answers in English (also French, German, and Arabic).
- When the front has passed, stay inside until told otherwise. The burned zone outside is not safe because the flames have moved on.
Confinement assumes a building worth confining in: masonry (which nearly every Spanish house is), openings closed, and a perimeter that is not a fuel bed. Whether your house qualifies, and the law that requires a cleared 15-metre strip around dwellings near forest land, is covered in Is Your House Defensible?
If you are caught in a car
Official traffic-authority guidance, summarized: never drive into smoke or flame. Close windows, shut off ventilation, lights and hazards on, slow down. If you must stop, stop on asphalt or bare ground away from vegetation, on the side away from the fire. Leaving the car is a last resort, moving away from the fire and against the wind, mouth and nose covered, ideally with a wet cloth. Call 112 with your location. The instinct the record punishes, at Pedrógão and at Los Gallardos, is driving deeper on a route you have not been given.
What your town has (and doesn’t have)
Every Costa del Sol municipality in an official fire danger zone is required to hold a local wildfire emergency plan (PLEIF). Status as of July 2026, from town-hall and Junta records:
- Marbella: PLEIF current (second revision approved May 2026); around 167 urbanización self-protection plans approved. Policía Local 952 89 99 00 / 092.
- Estepona: PLEIF in place, updated annually, incorporating 200+ urbanización plans; evacuated repeatedly in the 2021 Sierra Bermeja fire and again in July 2026. Policía Local 952 80 80 40 / 092.
- Mijas: the best-documented plan on the Costa, revised 2021, published in full on mijas.es; origin of the 2022 Sierra de Mijas fire (3,000+ evacuated). Policía Local 952 19 70 97 / 092.
- Benalmádena: both municipal emergency plan and PLEIF published in full on benalmadena.es; evacuated ~100 people in the September 2025 fire. Policía Local 952 56 21 42 / 092.
- Fuengirola: municipal emergency plan active; the least fire-exposed of the nine, though the 2022 Mijas fire reached its boundary. Policía Local 952 58 09 00 / 092.
- Torremolinos: municipal plan updated October 2025; pine forest at the northern edge is the exposure. Reach Policía Local via 092.
- Nerja: borders one of the highest-flammability zones in the province (Sierras Tejeda-Almijara); runs an official emergency WhatsApp line, 664 88 22 48, unusual and worth saving. Policía Local 952 52 15 45 / 092.
- Benahavís: two mass evacuations in five years (2021 and July 2026, when ~1,000+ left the Parque Botánico and Los Flamingos area and Montemayor was confined). No published municipal plan found; ask the town hall directly. Policía Local via 092.
- Málaga city: the entire municipal term is classified as a fire danger zone; the city publishes its emergency plan and a dedicated wildfire annex with risk maps. Policía Local 092.
One pattern across all nine, worth knowing in advance: no town publishes standing assembly points. Reception centres are designated when an emergency is declared, usually a sports pavilion, and announced through 112, @E112Andalucia, and town channels. So the answer to “where would we go?” is not on a map today; it arrives with the instruction, which is one more reason the channels in the ES-Alert guide are worth setting up now.
Your side of the bargain
Three legal obligations sit on residents in or within 400 metres of forest land (the zona de influencia forestal): urbanizaciones and isolated settlements must hold a self-protection plan with a cleared perimeter strip of at least 15 metres, clear access for fire engines, and working hydrants; individual parcels must be kept free of dry vegetation to the same standard; and from 1 June to 15 October, all fire in and near forest zones is banned outright, barbecues included, with narrow authorized exceptions. Compliance is patchy; at Los Gallardos, reporting found the dispersed settlements lacked the mandatory plans. The four questions to put to your comunidad are in the defensibility guide.
The five-minute version
- Three possible instructions: evacuate (by their route), shelter in place, or move away. Late improvised flight is the killer, not any of the three.
- The order comes from authorities or your mayor and reaches you by police at the door, megaphone, radio, and sometimes, not always, a phone alert. A knock in Spanish is the official channel.
- Confinement means sealed openings, gas off, water filled, family grouped away from the fire side, exterior lights on, 112 informed.
- 112 answers in English. Save the Nerja WhatsApp line if you live there. Set up ES-Alert today.
- Your walls are strong; your perimeter and your exit timing are what you control. Check both before August.
Related guides
- ES-Alert: Set Up Your Phone for Spain’s Emergency Alerts in 60 Seconds
- Is Your House Defensible? The Costa del Sol Wildfire Checklist
- Emergency Services in Spain: An Expat’s Guide
- Summer on the Costa del Sol: The Emergency Layer, on One Page
General information, current as of July 2026. Primary sources: Plan INFOCA (Decreto 371/2010 and amendments), the Junta de Andalucía’s official self-protection guidance, Ley 5/1999 and Decreto 247/2001, municipal emergency plans, and official 112 Andalucía service pages. In any live emergency, instructions from 112 and emergency services override everything in this guide.
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