In the heart of July, the mountain can be a suffocating trap or an inscrutable oasis. The difference, basically, depends on a millennia-old technology that doesn't plug into anything: the tree. We all know the blast of heat when we open a car parked in the sun, and the sigh of relief when we find it under the protection of a good canopy. This same logic of survival, translated on a large scale, turns forests into the planet's most efficient primitive air conditioning.

Years ago, houses used to be the most common refuges to protect oneself from the heat. Far are those times when grandma would prepare you a cold infusion of water with mint or place a bucket of ice in front of the fan as home remedies when you came back all sweaty from playing in the neighborhood square. Today the situation is quite the opposite. Now these home recipes fall rather short in the face of premature and record-breaking summers that force us to seek refuges everywhere. Before summer arrives, children and the elderly fill the squares, libraries, and neighborhood centers to try to alleviate the stifling heat. The idyllic postcard of a neighborhood network contrasts with the image of sweaty neighbors leaning between the bars and ledges of windows, especially in the poorest neighborhoods of Catalonia, where nearly 30% of vulnerable people cannot afford air conditioning. Inequalities are increasing, and the capacity of certain sectors of society to cope with heatwaves is becoming increasingly limited.

Heat waves don't just affect humans. High temperatures, humidity, and tropical nights can also take a toll on our pets, which is why it's important to adapt their environment and daily activities so they can get through the summer in the best possible way. As veterinarian Jaume Martínez, from the El Masnou Veterinary Center, explains, who has been dedicated to looking after the health of pets for nearly forty years, heat, "if they didn't live with us, they would experience it very well, because they would be still during the day, they wouldn't do anything, they would be in the shade, in a cool place. And even more so for cats, who are specialists in finding the coolest place to shelter". As Martínez reflects, they would spend the day resting, trying to hydrate themselves when they could, "and it's at night that they would be more active: they would go to eat, they would go hunting, they wouldn't be making useless efforts". With us it's different: "Things change because we, obviously thinking of dogs, take them for walks in places that can be asphalted or with surfaces that get very hot, and this makes them suffer from the heat in a very different way".

Catalonia registers the first half of the hottest summer since 1950. This is according to the latest report from the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat), which states that the average temperature is 3.8 °C above the climatic average, the highest since homogeneous data has been collected. However, there are symbols that explain better than any graph how the climate is changing in Catalonia. Like the thermometer at Portal de l'Àngel, designed to record maximum temperatures of 40 °C, which have already been exceeded in the city of Barcelona. Nevertheless, the thermometer has become one of the images of the new climatic scenario experienced in the country.

The low income level, the high concentration of poorly maintained houses, and the extreme temperature of these forty municipalities make them the towns and cities in the Barcelona region that suffer most from the effects of heat, especially now that temperatures are so high. This is a combination of social determinants that directly impacts the health of people living in these localities. For this reason, the Barcelona Urban Research Institute (IDRA) calls for priority action in these 39 municipalities and proposes as an emergency measure the distribution of air conditioners among the most vulnerable. The list includes medium-sized towns and cities such as Manresa, Cardona, and Artés, where the state of housing is particularly worrying and temperatures soar during the day, to populations such as l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Santa Coloma, Badalona, Cornellà, and Sant Boi, where it doesn't cool down at night and the apartments are old.

Catalonia is experiencing the second heatwave of this summer, which is expected to be extraordinarily long and will not end until next week. The Secretary of Public Health of the Generalitat, Esteve Fernàndez, warns in an interview with ARA about the serious consequences that high temperatures have for the health of citizens and calls for extreme precautions, especially among the most vulnerable.

The second heatwave of the summer reached its peak this Wednesday. The forecasts have been met and it has been an exceptionally warm day, with many extremely high values in many regions that have shattered several heat records. It can already be said that we are experiencing a historic episode, the umpteenth in recent years. This is the case of the Fabra Observatory in Barcelona, where the official maximum temperature at the manual station of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (RACAB) has finally been 40.9 °C, an absolute record in 113 years of data, surpassing the one in place until now, that of July 2024. The automatic station of the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat) located at Fabra also registered a maximum of 40.7 °C, the highest since the centennial data series began.

Catalonia faces a much better water scenario this summer than in previous years, but this does not mean that the risk of fires is lower. Abundant rains, especially during the winter, have allowed water reserves and the territory's water status to be recovered. Reservoirs have been filled, forests have been recovering from the historic drought, and vegetation has grown strongly after months of generous rainfall.

For days we have been living with this sticky heat. That puts us in a bad mood. That makes our children (and teachers, and monitors, and people who work in educational centers) finish the course inside boiling classrooms. The platform has denounced it Classrooms on Fire, and by moving its map of Catalonia you can see high school classrooms that reached 39 degrees. Also a chilling string of classes that have surpassed the legal limit, which states that “The temperature of the premises where sedentary work typical of offices or similar is carried out shall be between 17 and 27 degrees”. And the course has already ended and we seem to forget about it, but it shouldn't be like that.

It used to be a tradition for political parties to hold tribute ceremonies for their members with 25, 50, or even 75 years of membership. This rewarded purely sentimental values – loyalty, coherence –that politically go against a basic principle of democracy, which is the right to change one's mind. If everyone said "I am from ERC" or "I am from PP", with the same pride and conviction with which others say "I am from Barça" or "I am from La Penya", there would be no need to hold elections, just to call the roll from a register in which membership would be a datum as unmovable as the date of birth. In politics, the electoral strength of each option must depend on its behavior, and also on its response to changing circumstances.It can be argued that, if ideologies and political practice change, at least values should remain. But how many of the values we grew up with remain immaculate? And above all, how many of these values do not end up colliding, so that, by force, they must be relativized? How is the right to personal prosperity compatible with the aspiration of social justice? Can we be in favor of unhindered immigration and, at the same time, defend the continuity of Catalan identity, so marginalized? Can we simultaneously defend inclusive education, which leaves no one behind, and the detection and promotion of excellence?Difficult questions are what give meaning to our way of behaving as citizens. Perpetual doubt causes errors and missteps, but it is also a driving force for understanding change. Enough has happened at a national and planetary level for us to force ourselves to keep an open mind and discuss those things that make us uncomfortable, and which for some time now have been called the elephant in the room. In Catalonia there are long-standing elephants –identity, the relationship with Spain– and there are new ones –the migratory phenomenon, the degradation of public services, climate change, the scourge of tourism, housing.In all these matters, I think differently than when I was 25 years old. For example, a few decades ago we dreamed of having a global capital like Barcelona, without suspecting the collateral damage; we wanted papers for everyone, because we didn't imagine that Catalans would reach such a sharp point of minoritization. And we believed that the demand in school, which the priests had instilled in us in bad ways, had to be replaced by a more empathetic pedagogy, which has now entered a crisis, for often extra-educational reasons.Only change remains. And another thing: the national community. Despised because of the aggressive nationalisms of the last century, identity appears to us not as an ideology, but as a natural method that humans use to crystallize in a diverse world, an anchor that people (especially if they are far from their homeland) try to preserve. For me, belonging helps me define myself and relate to others. And it makes me irremediably independentist, because if I want to face all the elephants in my room, I need a room of my own – if possible, well-ventilated and with a view–. And, instead, I find myself sharing a small room in the hands of a landlord who overcharges me and does what he wants with my elephants.To put it without metaphors, Catalans are a national community that has lost its tools and its voice. It does not have enough capacity to solve the problems of its citizens. And where all the peoples of the world make themselves heard - whether it is the EU, the climate summit or the Football World Cup - we sacrifice our existence on the altar of a state that, to assert itself, needs to deny us.At this point, I confess that I have not changed my mind.

As this newspaper recently published, the heatwave at the end of June has so far caused 43 deaths in Catalonia. But these deaths, like exposure to extreme temperatures, are distributed unequally. Social vulnerability plays an important role in this inequality.According to a recent study by IGOP (Institute of Government and Public Policies of the UAB) which analyzes the combined impact of socioeconomic vulnerability and exposure to extreme temperatures, in metropolitan areas there seems to be an urban gap in relation to climate, and it is in the most vulnerable neighborhoods in socioeconomic terms where a greater impact of this situation occurs. More affluent neighborhoods systematically present a lower temperature due to factors such as lower population density, better insulated homes with more thermal conditioning, and more urban green space that helps regulate temperature. Therefore, the most impoverished neighborhoods, which are in the inverse situation, present a higher level of thermal stress that reverts to other factors, such as health.This objective and material reality often goes unnoticed in its full dimension because, once again, we glance at the global impacts of social inequalities. We know they exist. We name them, but if we don't experience them directly, it's hard for us to realize that daily life is permeated by the socioeconomic situation at all times. We learn about it sporadically, or at most occasionally, through news like this in the media, which provoke a brief moment of empathy in us, but that's all. Worse things are happening, we tell ourselves. And perhaps that's true. Contextual explanations pointing out how the socioeconomic model we live in and are increasingly deepening is leading us to truly critical situations are scarce and seem to be of little interest. Breaking down information about what poverty means in people's daily lives into small doses has this effect. Today we talk about thermal inequalities, but we have already spoken at times about inequalities in health status by neighborhoods. We also know and have explained that energy poverty affects vulnerable neighborhoods in cities more, and we have data on inequalities in children's academic performance and children's food poverty, also by neighborhoods. And, above all, we talk and write a lot about how the lack of housing or deficient housing causes extreme life situations. We tend to read it in isolation, but the most important thing is to understand that all these situations and many others that I don't have space for here are connected and cross the same lives, the same people, the same families; that the fact that we highlight one over another, because the novelty of the news demands it, does not mean that these realities are disaggregated. And now I would ask you: can you think, but above all feel, what it means to live daily with all the situations of social inequality that we talk about separately and in abstract?

One joins the safe and highly comforting bet of Natza Farré, who yesterday headlined that winter will return (I was going to write that I join it "warmly", but during a heatwave it is an adverb that makes you sweat just reading it). However, it will be veeery long until winter returns. The heatwave has all sorts of effects and none of them good, except, perhaps, that every day we spend melting like an ice cream makes it harder to deny the evidence of climate change and oppose a thorough review of our consumption models.

This heatwave, this European hell, has once again made it clear to us – if it was necessary, which it clearly is – that we are not prepared. That if heat doesn't suffocate us, rivers do; if the economy doesn't strangle us, an epidemic does; if corruption doesn't asphyxiate us, cynicism does. Europe is the continent warming up fastest, and down here, luckily, we know what heat is, and even if it's unbearable, we have blinds and trained sweat, but up there they have no idea; in fact, they used to come down to seek this heat that they now have at home and that enters through windows and walls designed to store warmth and get rid of cold. But neither the north nor the south are prepared for this 21st century that advances relentlessly like a conquest burning its ships. Because while the thermometers break records and need new digits, the human world is putting out fires, rescuing lives from the rubble in a country where it rains on the wet and awaits new political earthquakes that spark wars and place more dead lives under the remains of disaster. AI also makes us tremble, and we know that, like heat, it is unstoppable. But, like heat, we do not know, want, or can stop it. The good news is that it is a propitious moment for craftsmanship and calm to return. So that everything is done more slowly again and we stop this haste that only makes us sweat. 

In the metropolitan area of Barcelona, 905,000 people live in areas where social vulnerability and extreme heat converge. This means that more than a quarter of the metropolitan population lives in a neighborhood with old and poorly insulated buildings, streets without shade, and incomes and education levels below the Catalan average. This is one of the conclusions of ongoing research by the Institute of Government and Public Policies of the UAB (IGOP), which confirms that the postal code influences heat exposure.

The first heatwave of the year has left 43 deaths in Catalonia, according to estimates from the Daily Mortality Monitoring System (MoMo) of the Carlos III Health Institute. This is the only tool that allows us to visualize in almost real-time the deaths that occur daily in the State, which are calculated using the excess mortality indicator; that is, how many deaths that occur [observed] exceed those that were expected [estimated] in a given territory and period. The registry incorporates an estimate of mortality attributable to heat, differentiated from other causes, and indicates that in June the total number of deaths attributable to high temperatures rises to 64.

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.

The heat is eating away at Barcelona's schools. Using thermal imaging cameras, high temperatures in the Catalan capital's educational centers have been recorded, and the results are unsustainable: over 31 degrees inside classrooms, with a minimum not dropping below 29. On the playgrounds, the areas around the basketball hoops and goalposts register over 50 degrees. This is what Greenpeace denounces, after visiting six schools and institutes across the country to confirm the extreme temperatures endured by children and adolescents.

It's not even 9 AM and in the classrooms of many schools in Catalonia, thermometers are already climbing above 27 degrees, despite being in a week of relative climate respite. This is the case at Institut La Sedeta, located in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona, where since mid-May they systematically exceed 30 ºCin most areas of the center every day. During heat peaks, they have even reached 35 and 36 ºC, and the high humidity of the Catalan capital further exacerbates the feeling of suffocation experienced by students and teachers in the building.

Global warming is advancing and temperatures continue to rise relentlessly. This spring has been no exception. In fact, Catalonia has experienced the warmest spring since records began, according to data from the seasonal climate bulletin published by the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat). This report covers the three months of meteorological spring – March, May, and June – even though astronomical summer will not officially arrive until June 21.

Europe is experiencing an exceptional heat episode these days for a month of May, with values between 10 and 15 degrees above average. The temperatures, more typical of the summer heatwave, have sent thermometers soaring above 35 °C in several countries on the continent, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe, as well as in southern countries, the United Kingdom, and the Balkans. Numerous regions are on alert for extraordinarily high temperatures. In fact, in recent hours, the government of Italy has activated the national climate alert system, raising it to the maximum risk level for highs of up to 35 °C in cities such as Rome, Bologna, Brescia, Florence, and Turin, and some regions have restricted outdoor work during the hours of maximum insolation to protect workers.