At least 25 people were injured after a large gas explosion ripped through a bar in Madrid on Saturday afternoon, emergency services said, with three people in critical condition and two sustaining potentially serious injuries.
The blast occurred at about 3 p.m. on Manuel Maroto Street in the Puente de Vallecas district and also caused damage to residential flats above the premises, authorities said. Firefighters were clearing rubble while police closed off a section of the street and redirected traffic on adjoining roads.
Civil protection and medical services said they had treated 25 people at the scene, and Madrid city officials posted on X that police had attended to 21 injured people, three of them serious and two potentially serious. Emergency teams used sniffer dogs and drones to search the wreckage as firefighters worked to remove debris from the damaged building.
Video and images shared by Madrid emergency services showed a partially collapsed ceiling inside the bar, bricks strewn on the street, doors ripped from their hinges and shards of glass scattered on the pavement. First responders were seen carrying at least one person out of the premises on a stretcher.
Madrid's fire department said 18 firefighting units remained on site, joined by the municipal police Aerial Support Section operating drones and a canine unit to assist with search operations. Authorities did not immediately provide a cause beyond an initial identification of a gas explosion.
Neighbors told the newspaper El País the blast occurred in a ground-floor space that was treated as inhabited. Police cordoned off the area around Manuel Maroto Street while investigators and emergency crews continued work to secure the scene and check the structural integrity of the building and adjacent properties.
Local emergency services urged residents to avoid the area while operations were under way. Hospitals in the city received injured people from the scene, but officials did not provide details on their identities or longer-term conditions.
Madrid emergency services and municipal authorities said inquiries into the circumstances of the explosion were ongoing. They asked anyone with information or footage of the incident to contact the police, as investigators work to confirm the timeline and establish whether safety regulations or equipment failures contributed to the blast.
The explosion is the latest in a series of urban gas incidents that have prompted renewed attention to older building infrastructure and gas safety checks across Spanish cities. Authorities said they would share further details as their inspection and investigation proceed.