Overview
- The blaze began inside Le Grand Café and spread into the adjoining Ibis hotel on Monday, leaving both buildings completely destroyed according to Malaga city council.
- Fire crews evacuated roughly 100 guests and moved them to nearby hotels, and emergency services reported no treated injuries during the operation.
- Firefighters switched to exterior tactics when intense heat and partial structural failure created a risk of collapse, and they reported using thousands of litres of water per minute to cool the site.
- Teams rescued at least one intoxicated guest during room-to-room searches, and crews remain on site performing cooling work while the scientific police prepare a formal investigation.
- Beyond the immediate damage, staff face sudden job losses and the Ibis hotel's prior plan for vertical expansion now factors into engineers' assessments and decisions about repair or demolition.