A two-year-old child tragically died in northeast Spain on Tuesday after being left inside a parked car for several hours during a severe heatwave that has gripped the Iberian Peninsula.
Emergency services rushed to the scene in Valls, Tarragona province, after receiving an alert in the early afternoon, but despite efforts to revive the child, they were unsuccessful, according to police. Authorities believe the incident was caused by negligence, as the child had spent the entire morning locked inside the vehicle under the sun.
“It was heatstroke,” a police spokesperson told AFP. “Even an adult would not have survived under such conditions.”
Temperatures in the area reached 32 degrees Celsius in the shade that morning, the national weather agency Aemet reported. Much of Spain has been sweltering under extreme heat for several days, with the scorching conditions extending across Portugal, France, Italy, the Balkans, and Greece. The high temperatures have triggered public health warnings and raised concerns about wildfires.
Several parts of Spain saw temperatures soar well above 40°C, smashing June temperature records. Aemet confirmed earlier on Tuesday that this June had been the hottest ever recorded in Spain, with an average temperature of 23.6°C — eclipsing the previous record of 22.8°C set in 2017.
Saturday also saw two suspected heatstroke deaths among road workers, one in Córdoba in southern Spain and another in Barcelona.
In neighbouring Portugal, a new June temperature record was set on Sunday when the mercury hit 46.4°C in Mora, about 100 kilometres east of Lisbon. The previous record for the month was 44.9°C, registered in Alcácer do Sal in 2017, according to the IPMA meteorological agency.
On Sunday alone, 37 percent of the IPMA’s monitoring stations recorded temperatures above 40°C. Several districts, including those around Lisbon, were placed under red alert on Sunday and Monday. Eight inland regions remained on the second-highest alert tier, with significant risks of wildfires, particularly in central and northern forested areas.
Experts have pointed to human-driven climate change as a key factor in intensifying the frequency and severity of heatwaves, especially in urban environments where concrete and buildings trap heat.
Dr Michael Byrne, a climate science lecturer at the University of St Andrews, explained that while heat domes — atmospheric conditions that trap warm air — are not new, the heat they now produce is unprecedented.
“Europe is more than two degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times, so when a heat dome happens, it produces hotter and more dangerous conditions,” he said. “Climate change is loading the dice, making extreme heat events increasingly intense and hazardous.”
