The CGT has reported this Thursday that the Barcelona City Council continues to fail to adequately protect municipal workers and concessionary company employees from extreme heat episodes, more than a year after the death of the cleaning worker Montse Aguilar. The union has announced that it has filed six complaints this year with the Labor Inspectorate linked to the Joan Miró Cleaning Center, near Plaça Espanya, for what it considers deficient management of anti-heatstroke wristbands, lack of air conditioning in vehicles, occupational risk training and worker information, as well as for the management of some superiors. The CGT maintains that the protocols approved by the council are insufficient or are being applied "late and halfway," in a summer marked by three heatwaves.

We read in ARA that the visitor service workers at the Sagrada Família are on strike to denounce "extreme" climatic and labor conditions. Apparently, many end their workday at the infirmary due to heatstroke, dehydration, and dizziness. It says they work an 11-hour shift “without being able to sit down” and are requesting “handheld fans and appropriate changing rooms,” among other measures. Temple officials are already installing sunshades and fresh water points wherever they can, apparently.

Every summer that passes confirms it: extreme heat has ceased to be a conjunctural accident to become a structural element. On the Mediterranean facade, moreover, it has a specific and especially insidious form, which are tropical and torrid nights, when the thermometer does not drop below 25 degrees and the body cannot recover. Because heat kills mostly at night and kills in silence. It strikes the elderly who live alone, poorly insulated apartments, those who work outdoors. The climate crisis is decided on a planetary scale, but heat is suffered, and it must also be fought, on the street. In the square without shade, in the classroom without air conditioning, in the neighborhood without greenery. Therefore, we could say that the front line of this battle is not only at international summits. On a day-to-day basis, it is played out in town halls.And the city councils have started to get involved. This summer there are nearly 2,000 active climate shelters in almost 400 Catalan municipalities, and the metropolitan area of Barcelona has expanded its network to 319, 31% more than last year. Valencia has doubled the number, from 18 to 39, to guarantee at least one in each district. And the movement is no longer just a matter for large cities. In Pla de Mallorca, towns like Sineu, Costitx, and Lloret de Vistalegre are transforming the areas around their schools into climate shelters. Away from asphalt and concrete: permeable pavements, large trees, shade designed to protect children and the elderly. Small municipalities doing, on their scale, what Paris does with the city as a whole, from the Seine to the schoolyards as “oases”.So far, the good news: adaptation to heat has entered the daily agenda of municipalism. The less good news is that, for the moment, the changes are more of intention than of transformation. In Valencia, a third of the announced shelters are libraries, which close in August, just when the heat hits hardest. In Barcelona, out of the 41 municipal libraries, 19 will remain open throughout August. On this matter, we should avoid continuing to play by the logic of "he who lives day by day", because everything suggests that the coming years will not be precisely better. Climate adaptation cannot be limited to an exercise of relabeling and adapting existing facilities, without touching a single square meter of asphalt.

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”.

In recent weeks, there has been a decrease in incidents caused by mosquito bites. Although high temperatures favor these insects, the extreme heat that Catalonia has suffered in recent months does not seem to please them much. Unlike mammals, mosquitoes do not have an internal thermal regulation mechanism. This makes them very vulnerable to heat and the dehydration it causes, leading them to seek refuge in vegetation during the day to survive.

Extreme heat is not giving any respite this summer, and data confirms that we are experiencing an exceptionally suffocating and unprecedented period. Catalonia has registered the hottest summer start since 1950, which is when homogeneous and well-distributed climate data for the entire country began to be available. This is the conclusion of the climate balance of the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat) published this Thursday.

Catalonia is fully in a new heatwave –the third since the start of summer– and this Wednesday will experience the highest peak, when temperatures will soar considerably. In many parts of the pre-coastal area, Central Catalonia, Ponent, and the Ebro valley, it will be a torrid day, with highs reaching or exceeding 40°C. In fact, Meteocat has extended yellow and orange alerts for intense heat to many counties, and has even activated the red alert –the highest– in the Barcelona pre-coastal area.

The heatwave that choked much of Western and Central Europe in late June also led to a surge in deaths on the continent. According to data published by EuroMOMO – a network that, with the support of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization, maps excess mortality compared to other years – European countries registered more than 10,000 deaths above average during the days of the unprecedented intense and widespread heat episode.

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.