‘I had an incredible escape’: British woman tells of close encounter with Spanish wildfire

Jeanne Henny: ‘You thought the fire was miles away and then suddenly it was in front of you on the road.’ Photograph: Handout

The speed, scale and ferocity of the wildfire in and around the Bédar municipality of Almería took everyone by surprise.

Jeanne Henny, an English woman who has had a house in the tiny hamlet of Los Pinos for 33 years, initially took Thursday afternoon’s yellow skies as proof that a calima wind from the Sahara was showering desert dust on the area. Then she noticed the smoke and saw from a fire-alert app that a blaze had broken out.