Two foreign holidaymakers have died in a lightning strike at a beach in Majorca.
One of the men died instantly at the Cala Mesquida beach near Capdepera in the north-east of the island.
The other victim, believed to be unknown to the first, started convulsing and died around 40 minutes afterwards despite efforts by emergency responders to revive him at the scene.
The drama occurred during a storm in the area and led to the popular beach, famed for its white sand and crystalline waters, being evacuated briefly to avoid a further tragedy.
Local reports said one of the men was killed after it began raining hard and he put his hand on the metal handle of his parasol to fold it away and leave the beach with his wife when lightning lit up the sky.
Lifeguard Federico Parisin told one island newspaper he had rushed over to one of them when he saw smoke coming from his body from a distance, adding: “When we reached him his body was completely carbonised.
“We began to try to revive the other man while a fierce electrical storm was raging above us and fearing for our lives as well.”
The two people who lost their lives, a Swiss man aged 65 and a German aged 51, are not thought to have been part of the same group although they were close by each other.
Their bodies were shielded using sun loungers and parasols while police and other emergency responders waited for court officials to arrive and approve their removal.
There were no reports of any other casualties and it was not immediately clear if any British tourists were on the beach at the time.
Local police and Civil Guard helped clear the beach briefly after today’s tragedy.
The drama happened just nine days after a 20-month-old girl was killed by a huge hail stone around four inches in diameter and more than 70 others injured by falling ice in and around the Catalan town of La Bisbal de l’Emporda.
Most of those hurt suffered head wounds, cuts and broken bones.
Tourists travelling to Spain were warned last month they could be caught up in rare Mediterranean hurricanes.
Experts said the risk of tropical-like cyclones called medicanes had increased with this year’s record heat waves affecting the UK’s favourite holiday destination and the rise in sea temperatures blamed on global warming.
Oceanographer and weather expert Yurima Celdran, a marine sciences graduate who went on to do a masters degree in meteorology, said: “Higher Mediterranean temperatures provide a greater source of energy for medicanes and amplify their destructivity.
“Sea temperatures this autumn are expected to be higher than normal and if the necessary atmosphere conditions are in place, it would not be unreasonable to think the Mediterranean could harbour a medicane this year.”
Torrential rain, terrifying lightning storms and flash floods in September 2019 which battered the provinces of Alicante and Murcia, claimed the lives of seven people.
