The second heatwave of the summer is just ending and the third is already showing its face. This Friday is the last official day of the episode that in recent days has shattered heat records across the country. Thermometers have begun to drop in recent hours, although they come from so high up that the atmosphere remains fully summery, with maximums that will still reach 40°C in Ponent. Meteocat maintains yellow alerts activated for intense heat in this area on Friday, as well as in Baix and Alt Penedès, Garraf, and Baix Llobregat.

Heading towards Catalunya Ràdio downstairs, from Ferrocarrils, through the alleyways, narrower than those in L'Eixample, which cross Muntaner street. Walking on the sidewalk, a gust of hot air propels itself towards my legs. And another. And another. At first, I don't understand. It seems like a sauna, one of those gym ones, when it starts up. Then, yes. It's the outlets of the air conditioners from the apartment buildings and shops, devices I imagine as furious dragons. The street I'm walking on, due to the thermal comfort of the interiors – comfort I envy and applaud – is like a boiling pot. All this heat that the roaring dragons spew must heat the street temperature by a degree or two. The other day, in ARA, they said that the heat is localized by neighborhood and that poorer neighborhoods suffer more from it, due to narrowness, ventilation... But they didn't take into account that in rich neighborhoods with many clothing stores there are air conditioners, and if there are air conditioners indoors, there is more heat outdoors, because we've reached the Moon, but we haven't devised a good system for expelling hot air. And so, the paradox arises that the more climate change, the more air conditioners we need, and the more air conditioners we need, the more climate change, and the more climate change...

The second heatwave of the summer is already here: thermometers have shot up and have already reached or exceeded 40°C in several inland areas. In fact, Tuesday was the hottest day of the summer so far, as 43°C was reached or exceeded in the Lleida plain and especially in the southern interior. Up to six Meteocat stations with more than 20 years of data broke their absolute heat record in Ribera d'Ebre, Segrià, Pla d'Urgell, and Priorat. An episode of extreme heat that will peak on Wednesday in most of the country. But, although the mercury will recede a little by the weekend, there is no clear end in sight for this heatwave, which is expected to be extraordinarily long and not end until next week.

In these hours of unbearable temperatures, when we are chaining heatwaves and forest fires, it becomes more evident than ever that if we do not want to succumb to vital anguish, it will be better to accept that the emergency has become the new normal. And that as important as survival kits is psychologically accepting this reality. I think it would help:

We start the week the same way we spent the weekend: pending the Gavarres fire. There are still people who cannot return home.

For some years now, heatwaves have been more frequent, longer, and more intense. Climate change is no longer a distant threat, but an everyday reality that manifests itself in our streets and squares, and, above all, in our homes.

Just as we were recovering from last week's historic heatwave, the second one is already knocking at the door. Summer has barely begun and we are already heading for the second extreme heat episode of the season. Therefore, the slight respite that temperatures have given us coinciding with the beginning of July will not continue.

The hotter the heatwave gets, the more I stumble through Barcelona with the lady with the umbrella. Nothing to do with the elegant modernist statue in Parc de la Ciutadella, which delicately extends a hand to check if it's still raining. The one I usually find is an Asian woman who has decided to protect her white skin from the sun and who walks along the Eixample pavements towards some Gaudí building with an outfit often reinforced with a cap and sunglasses. You feel like asking her for a corner of her umbrella, like in Brassens' song. The umbrella trend has more followers with each passing day, but, curiously, I haven't seen any men carrying one.

This that we call “the heatwave” has forced Parisian intellectuals into an extraordinary measure, which they are apparently not used to, because they don't always have air conditioning in the metro and they sweat like lice: the sale of alcohol in supermarkets is prohibited from six in the afternoon, and also consuming it in the street from aperitif time until breakfast. They say that alcohol promotes dehydration, and it's true.

The image of long queues in front of large appliance stores every day first thing in the morning, before they open, to buy an air conditioner or a fan, best explains the desperation of the French after nine days of a historic, intense and long heatwave, with daytime and nighttime temperatures that have broken all records. Managing to buy an air conditioning unit has become an impossible mission. Stocks have run out.

The heatwave hitting Catalonia has had a clear impact on health. In two days –Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 June– thirteen deaths associated with high temperatures have been recorded, coinciding with the peak of high temperatures, according to the Daily Mortality Monitoring System MoMo of the Carlos III Health Institute. This is the start of the summer season with the highest mortality since records began in 2015. Of the series, only June 2022 had a worse performance, with deaths before the first fortnight of a month that ended with 39 victims.

A new episode of intense and widespread heat is setting record highs across much of Western and Central Europe. Sustained high temperatures for several days and sleepless nights are affecting countries accustomed to heat this week—though not this early—such as France, Catalonia, Spain, and Italy, and parts of the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany, where it is increasingly less exceptional for the mercury to soar. The impact of the heatwave on health is high, and several states have issued meteorological alerts to warn the population of dehydration, heatstroke, and even death.

Firefighters found two children, aged 2 and 4, dead this Monday from cardiovascular arrest inside the family car. The cause of death is still uncertain, but the prosecutor for the Vaucluse department, in the southeast of the country, points to the intense heat. The mother has been attended by medical services, but the police have not yet taken her statement.

The start of summer 2026 arrives accompanied by unprecedented climatic severity in a large part of Western Europe. The seasonal change has coincided with a sudden escalation of temperatures that has forced the French meteorological service to decree the maximum alert level in the metropolitan region of Paris, where the thermometer today reached 38º and threatens to surpass historical records this week, more typical of desert latitudes.

After the intense heat of recent days and experiencing the warmest spring since records began, the astronomical summer will officially begin this Sunday at 10:24 AM, even though it seems to have set in weeks ago. And it will arrive in grand style, as the first heatwave of the year will also kick off. The anticyclone and the gust of warm air from North Africa will strengthen, driven by southerly winds that will cause a low-pressure system located in the Atlantic.

The heat was again very intense and full of heatstroke this Friday, with maximums around 37°C in Ponent. And attention because this weekend the thermometers will not stop rising. The atmosphere will be especially torrid from Sunday, when the first heatwave of the year will begin in our country, with extreme temperatures throughout the country for at least three consecutive days, both day and night. We expect suffocating days, with up to 40°C or more inland, and quite widespread sleepless nights. Meteocat has already issued the first official warnings for intense daytime heat in Ponent on Sunday and which will extend to many more regions on Monday. For its part, Civil Protection has activated the Procicat plan alert.

The climate emergency has tripled deaths due to the heat of this summer in Europe: Without this phenomenon caused by the burning of fossil fuels, 68% of the deaths caused by extreme heat this summer on the Old Continent would not have occurred. This is the conclusion of a study led by scientists from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which estimates that at least 24,400 people died between June and August 2025 in 850 European cities due to high temperatures. The study also estimates that if there were no climate change, 16,500 of these deaths would not have occurred and the number of heat-related deaths would have been 7,900.

For a few years now, the effects of the climate crisis have been clearly visible. Whether it's summer, autumn, winter, or spring, the corresponding temperatures are increasingly higher, and the associated meteorological phenomena, however common they may be, gain in intensity season after season. During heat waves, the thermometer rises higher than ever (and drops less than ever in terms of nighttime lows); during transition periods, the warmed seawater carries more weight than ever before in storms, whether they are associated with a cold snap or not; and winters with little rain are increasingly frequent and longer, opening the door to more periods of drought. And of course, the particular combination of these factors leaves many forests at the mercy of the flames: we are becoming familiar with sixth-generation fires, those that are beyond the capacity to attack them.

Heat waves, droughts, and floods affected a quarter of all regions in the European Union (EU) in the summer of 2025, with aggregate macroeconomic losses estimated at €43 billion this year and expected to rise to 126 billion in the medium term (until 2029). This is indicated by a joint study led by Dr. Sehrish Usman of the University of Mannheim and with the participation of economists from the European Central Bank (ECB). The research highlights the greater impact in the south of the continent and breaks down the data by geographic area.

Often when we think about the climate crisis, starving polar bones come to mind and melting glaciers. And yet, the global rise in temperatures and associated extreme events are also a serious threat to human health. Continued exposure to excessive heat causes premature death, worsens mental health and aggravates respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Sustained heatwave episodes, like those this summer, are associated with a higher level of aggression and conflict, and favor the transmission of infectious diseases, like dengue, malaria and chikungunya.