The heat wave engulfs Spain with over 40 degrees and new forest fires

41 degrees in Madrid. 46 scheduled in Seville for this Thursday. The high temperatures overwhelm Spain once again, and the rest of the Mediterranean countries, with a heat wave which could last, like never before, until the end of the month.

“The heat wave we’re having now has all the characteristics that it will be historic,” he says Clarione José Miguel Viñas, meteorologist at Meteored, a platform dedicated to weather conditions that has 25 websites around the world.

«It lasts longer than normal – underlines Viñas -. It usually lasts 4 to 5 days. And not in the order of two weeks, as expected. It’s barbaric. “

According to the Carlos III Institute’s Daily Mortality Monitoring System, the first two days of this unbearable heat wave caused 43 dead in Spain: almost all of them, the elderly and the sick decompensated by high temperatures.

This thermal hell is also causing fires in Spain and especially in Portugal, where up to this Thursday 813 outbreaks have occurred which have caused the death of one person and 135 injured. It is estimated that 6,400 hectares have already been burned in Portugal.

In Madrid, this Thursday, only tourists dared to challenge the exterior of the streets of the Barrio de las Letras or Malasaña.

without air conditioning

What the Spaniards call “terrazas”, which are the sidewalk tables, seemed sparsely populated. Sitting inside, next to a window and with air conditioning, it became the trend topic of Aladdin’s lamp wishes.

Because in Spain, according to a survey by the Idealista real estate platform, only 36 percent of homes have air conditioning.

The data comes from over a million homes and apartments for sale and rent advertised on Idealista on July 12 last year.

“In the next few hours we will reach the ‘crest’ of the wave and new records could be set,” they said from Meteored at eight in the morning on Thursday.

“Up to today (Thursday) in Orense the absolute maximum temperature records have been broken, where they reached 43.3 degrees. Yesterday (for Wednesday) in Zamora and Toledo ”, they added.

“In Spain, the historical temperature record was recorded in August 2021 in Montoro, Andalusia. It was 47.3 degrees, “he says Clarione the meteorologist Viñas.

“Heat waves have always existed, but we are seeing that, in recent years, they are more intense,” he adds. Some of them are taking place, although not at the time they usually take place, between July 15 and August 15, according to statistics. “

Unusual

Viñas clarifies that “around April and May, the forecast models for the (European) summer, ie for June, July and August, indicated that Europe would have temperatures above the norm”.

And he predicts: “It may be that, between now and the end of the month, we will relax, but we will not return to the normal values ​​of the summer but they will be above.”

Until the end of the summer period, explains the meteorologist, it will not be possible to know if this wave will exceed the magnitude of the worst that Spain experienced in the summer of 2003.

The Retiro park, with its over 15,000 trees, hosted those looking for a restful shade this Thursday.

But the best relief in Madrid was in Madrid Río, the project that reclaimed the Manzanares River and the areas surrounding it.

There, there was a queue to surrender to the pressurized jets that throw water off the ground.

recommendations

The groups that travel the city center preach their liturgy on board through the screens on which the advertisements and attractions of Madrid are usually projected: sleep with cotton sheets, with all the lights off and constantly hydrate while awake.

Neither asleep nor awake, those who cannot believe what is happening to them are the inhabitants of the northern part of the Chamberí neighborhood in Madrid. Due to a malfunction in the network of the Canal de Isabel II, the public water company of the Community of Madrid, Hundreds of neighbors ran out of water.

Is there a greater punishment in the midst of a heat wave than enduring 41 degrees already dry?

At four in the afternoon, a company van traveled through the streets affected by the water cut and left dozens of drums on the sidewalk for the neighbors.

Madrid. Corresponding