Fire in Palos de la Frontera shantytown kills 39-year-old worker and destroys 20 dwellings

Fatal fire in Poligono San Jorge

A fire broke out on the morning of Saturday, 26 September 2026, in an informal settlement located within the Poligono San Jorge industrial sector of Palos de la Frontera, Huelva. The emergency coordination centre of 112 Andalucia logged initial alert calls starting around 08:00, with further notifications arriving near 09:00 as flames spread through the settlement. The blaze destroyed approximately 20 makeshift wooden and plastic shanties before emergency crews contained the perimeter. A 39-year-old Mauritanian national, who moved to Spain in early 2025 to work in regional agricultural campaigns, died inside his dwelling. Emergency response teams at the scene included three firefighters and a corporal operating two extinction vehicles dispatched from the San Juan del Puerto fire station, supported by officers from the Guardia Civil and the Local Police, medical staff from the 061 emergency service, and volunteers from the Red Cross.

Emergency response and judicial procedures

Firefighters brought the blaze under control and spent several hours clearing thick, lingering smoke from the charred remains of the shanties. The dense smoke and hazardous structural conditions initially prevented the duty judge from entering the victim's destroyed accommodation. Once firefighters secured the area and cleared the air, judicial authorities accessed the dwelling and completed the formal recovery of the deceased worker's body shortly before 13:00. The Provincial Firefighters Consortium of Huelva reported that the initial cause of the fire remains unknown, and no other immediate injuries were confirmed among settlement residents.

Second fatal settlement fire in September

The incident is the second fatal fire in a Huelva migrant camp within two weeks, bringing the provincial death toll in informal settlements to two during September 2026. On 12 September 2026, another migrant farmworker died in a fire that swept through the La Sevillana settlement in the neighbouring municipality of Lucena del Puerto. The makeshift camps house thousands of migrant labourers who reside in the region to work in agricultural harvests, particularly the red fruit and berry sectors. In July 2026, Palos de la Frontera experienced a destructive blaze that destroyed roughly 300 shanties and burned across 300 hectares of land, leaving the terrain unusable. Following that earlier incident, the mayor of Palos de la Frontera, Milagros Romero, addressed the cyclical occurrence of fires in the municipality's seasonal camps.

This is repeated every year, always at the end of the campaign there are these types of events.

Living conditions and previous settlement fires

The settlement at Poligono San Jorge is one of the largest in the province of Huelva, according to the Southern Border 2025 report published by the Pro-Human Rights Association of Andalusia (APDHA). Labour unions and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called on public administrations to improve housing infrastructure and living conditions for vulnerable agricultural workers residing in the area year-round. The San Jorge encampment has suffered multiple severe fires over recent years. On 13 May 2023, a fire destroyed between 120 and 200 substandard dwellings in the same settlement, leaving several residents injured and one person in serious condition.