A huge bushfire is threatening the wealthy Spanish resort of Marbella.

Unusually dry weather has contributed to a series of fires in the country after a prolonged heatwave left much of Spain's countryside tinder-dry.

At least one person has died in the fires at Spain's popular upmarket holiday destination, Costa del Sol.

Around 800 people - firefighters and emergency military personnel, backed by 31 planes and helicopters - battled the blaze, which was fanned by warm, dry winds in southern Spain, officials said.

Flames licked the tree tops, lighting up the sky in the early hours as a 12 kilometre line of fire glowed across the Sierra Negra mountains by the Costa del Sol resort.

The inferno, which reportedly forced up to 5,000 people from their homes, also left a couple with major burns, and sent a mother and her two children scurrying into a cave to escape the danger.

A British man's corpse was found in a small rural home near Ojen, not far from Marbella, despite an evacuation order the previous night, a spokesman for the Andalusia regional government said.

The 78-year-old man's burnt corpse was found near the remains of the house, which had been consumed by flames.

A search of the ruins found no other victims.

Another five people were taken to hospital, among them a Spanish couple in their 50s, who sustained second and third-degree burns over about two-thirds of their bodies, the government spokesman said.

"They are in a serious state with mechanical ventilation," he said.

The flames reached their chalet in the district of Rosario in the foothills of the mountains overlooking long white beaches along the Mediterranean coast, Spanish media said.

A 40-year-old mother and her two children, one aged three and the other 11, took refuge from the inferno in a cave, and were treated for bruises and given oxygen in hospital, officials said.

High fire risk

Sorry, this video has expired One dead as Spanish fire blazes on ( APTN )

The inferno broke out on Thursday afternoon (local time) and rapidly gained strength into the night.

"The whole mountainside was burning," one evacuated resident, Catherina, told Spanish news agency Europa Press.

"At dusk you could see the full glare of the fire and the sky was entirely covered in red," a resident from near Marbella said.

Early Friday morning, the wind died down and a brief sprinkling of rain fed hopes for relief.

Ojen's 3,000 residents were all evacuated as a thick cloud of smoke billowed in the cinder-clogged air. Surrounding trees were blackened by the fire.

However, residents in other parts of the scorched region were allowed to return home.

In the late afternoon, firefighters were focussing on hotspots near Ojen and trying to prevent the fire spreading into new areas after it jumped a highway, officials said.

Spain's major Mediterranean motorway was briefly cut off, but reopened in the afternoon.

Marbella's beaches and vibrant night life attract about 1.5 million foreign tourists a year, mostly Britons but also Nordic visitors and Germans, French, Italians, Dutch and Belgians.

Spain is at particularly high risk of fires this summer after suffering its driest winter in 70 years, and blazes have broken out in various parts of the country in recent days.

Flames destroyed more than 153,000 hectares of land between January 1 and August 26, three times the amount during the same time last year and the highest amount in a decade, according to agriculture ministry figures.

There have been major wildfires in northern Catalonia, near the Pyrenees, and on La Gomera, in the Canary Islands.

ABC/AFP