Neither cold nor heat

We read in ARA that heat kills more at night than during the day in Barcelona and that experts say “there is a generalized overestimation of heating needs and an underestimation of cooling needs”. It says we are starting from “a past climate” and that “urgent reforms are needed for both the Technical Building Code and the energy certification system”.

I come from a time when, in winter, boys and girls wore skirts and shorts, and we got chilblains, which is a word unknown to anyone under 30. We slept in houses without “central heating”, where when you got into bed the sheets were damp. Going to pee at night was a ordeal you tried to avoid, holding it in until you couldn't anymore. The chamber pot under the bed was the lesser evil. That phrase that grandmothers used to tell you after knitting you a terrible sweater with a matching hat – “Ande yo caliente, y ríase la gente” (Let me be warm, and let people laugh) – shows that protecting oneself too much from the cold was not socially acceptable. However, just as cold was understood as strengthening, heat did not have the same moral consideration. Heat “was normal” and complaining about heat was for the lazy. Having heating elements was desirable and not having them was being very unfortunate. Having cooling elements, on the other hand, was a luxury and an eccentricity.

This has persisted to this day. And now, with climate change (if anyone still denies it, I recommend they go to a vegetable garden or a vineyard to see how beans without cover get scorched and dry out and how crops are brought forward), we find that air conditioning is no longer a luxury, just as heating has not been for many years. We now find ourselves managing and demanding cooling for children and the elderly. We find ourselves accepting the warming caused by air conditioning as we have accepted for years the warming caused by diesel emissions. Until recently, energy poverty was just not being able to heat oneself. Today it is not being able to cope with the heat, which, as we read in the newspaper, is deadly.