Spain opens manslaughter probe over nightclub fire deaths

The fire erupted just before dawn in a warehouse housing two discos, Teatre and Fonda Milagros, located on the outskirts of the city in southeastern Spain.

Police and forensic investigators entered the premises on Monday to try and determine how the fire started and whether it was the result of negligence.

The court said forensic medical teams had on Monday "completed the autopsies, collecting the necessary data for identification and determining the causes and circumstances of death".

The investigation will need to determine if the nightclub operators failed to take adequate safety measures, the city's top prosecutor Jose Luis Diaz Manzanera told La Opinion de Murcia newspaper.

If the deaths were caused by negligence or inadequate safety measures, those responsible could face up to nine years in jail "as it is a case involving a large number of deaths", he said.

Any search of the venue would be "exhaustive" to gather as much evidence as possible.

"We must go centimetre by centimetre, checking everything," he said.

"Let's see how it ends up. There may have been a short circuit that was not caused by negligence," he said.

The mother of one of the victims, killed in a fire at a nightclub where he was celebrating his birthday in Murcia, reacts outside the city's Sports Pavillion where she received psychological assistance. (Photo by JOSE JORDAN / AFP)

 

Victims' identification 'very difficult'

City officials had on Monday said that the venue, which was popular with Latin Americans, had been slapped with a closure order in January 2022.

The order, which they said was ignored, was issued after Teatre's management divided the venue in half to create a second club called Fonda Milagros, which bore the brunt of the blaze.

Officials did not say why the venue was still operating but said the fire appeared to have spread rapidly through the air conditioning vents.

By Monday night, police confirmed six of the victims had been identified by their fingerprints in what officials warned would be a "very difficult" process which would take time.

Diaz Manzanera said he hoped the outcome of the probe would not be the same as that which followed Spain's worst-ever nightclub fire in Madrid in December 1983, when 81 people died.

Only one person was sentenced over that tragedy, and jailed for just two years.

The latest blaze is the worst nightclub fire since 1990 when 43 people died in a blaze in the northeastern city of Zaragoza.

In that case "no one was held responsible", he added.