Spanish police have rescued a man who was kidnapped and bundled into the boot of a car after he managed to alert his girlfriend by sending her a photo of the vehicle’s steering wheel and a set of coordinates.

On 23 January Policía Nacional officers in the Andalucían province of Málaga received a report that a man had been kidnapped two days earlier on the promenade of the town of Sabinillas. The man had been taken by a group of men travelling in two cars who were looking for information on the whereabouts of another man who had apparently swindled them out of €30,000 (£25,000) in a drug deal.

Officers were also provided with videos of the victim, showing him face down and with a pistol at his head while he was asked where the other man was.

Unknown to his captors, however, the kidnapped man managed to contact his friends and send his girlfriend a photograph of the steering wheel logo of the car he was travelling in. He also sent coordinates that led police to a street in Torre del Mar, a town along the coast from Málaga.