He Report on the State of the Climate in Europepublished this Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)ceases to be a simple theoretical warning and becomes a clear confirmation of the growing vulnerability of Spain.
With 42 specific mentions in the document, Spanish geography stands out as the territory where the global warming It manifests itself more aggressively throughout the continent. The study concludes that 95% of Europe recorded temperatures above averagebut it is in the Iberian Peninsula where the indicators of thermal stress and forest destruction have broken all statistical scales known to date.
During 2025, the south and east of the country recorded up to 50 additional days with at least “strong” heat stress index. The report also points out that in several areas of the south of the continent, especially in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Spain, more days than usual were recorded with a thermal stress index of at least “very strong”, in which the thermal sensation was 38°C or more. In some areas of southern Spain, up to six days more than normal were recorded with levels of thermal stress considered “extreme”.
The succession of heat waves gave no respite: those of June marked the highest averages in history for that month, and August reached a peak of 45 degreesconsolidating itself as the most intense heat episode in Spain since records began in 1975.
Added to this panorama were the calls “tropical nights“, whate increased by 30 compared to the usual average on the Mediterranean coast, preventing the physical recovery of the population and the ecosystem.
The impact was not limited to land. The Mediterranean suffered extreme marine heat waves, the largest of which occurred between the southeast of Spain and Algeria in late June and early July.
Exceptional fire season
However, the most devastating data in the report focuses on the “exceptional season” of forest fires. Spain and Portugal accounted for 65% of the burned area in all of Europe, with a record number in the Spanish northwest that had not been seen in decades. Only in Spain More than 380,000 hectares were burned, an area 4.6 times greater than the average of the last twenty years.
He Zamora firewith 40,081 hectares devastatedhas been officially registered as the largest forestry incident in the country since 1968. This environmental catastrophe had a paradoxical origin: a extremely rainy springthe fifth wettest since 1961, which, although it alleviated the accumulated drought since 2022, led to a explosive growth of vegetation that ended up becoming dry and lethal fuel during the scorching summer.
According to the WMO, Spain contributed approximately half of the total carbon emissions from forest fires in all of Europe in 2025.