By Abbas Nazil
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has renewed his warning that climate change is costing lives, urging stronger efforts to tackle its causes as Spain battles one of its worst wildfire seasons in recent years.
Speaking during a government briefing on the country’s growing climate challenges, Sánchez said the climate emergency continues to threaten human lives, biodiversity, homes, businesses and livelihoods, stressing that responding only after disasters occur is no longer enough.
He called for greater investment in climate adaptation, disaster preparedness and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that preventing future climate impacts should become a national priority alongside emergency response efforts.
Sánchez’s latest remarks come as wildfires have burned more than 180,000 hectares of land across Spain during the first seven months of 2026, highlighting the country’s increasing vulnerability to extreme weather linked to rising global temperatures.
The prime minister said Spain must anticipate the effects of climate change, reduce the factors driving global warming and improve systems designed to protect communities from future disasters.
His comments echoed a statement he made in 2022 while visiting wildfire-ravaged areas in the southwestern region of Extremadura, where he declared that climate change kills people, destroys ecosystems and damages the social and economic foundations of communities.
That year, severe wildfires claimed lives in the northern region of Castilla y León, while a man operating an excavator died after flames engulfed his machine as he attempted to create a firebreak to protect his town.
During the same summer, a street cleaner in Madrid died after suffering heatstroke while working in extreme temperatures, with emergency responders recording a body temperature of more than 41 degrees Celsius.
Spain has increasingly experienced prolonged droughts, more frequent heatwaves, unpredictable rainfall, desertification and devastating wildfires, making it one of Europe’s countries most exposed to the impacts of climate change.
Public awareness of the issue has also grown.
A national survey conducted in late 2024 found that a large majority of Spaniards consider climate change a genuine threat to both human wellbeing and the health of the planet.
Despite this growing concern, political divisions over climate policy remain strong.
The opposition People’s Party has rejected Sánchez’s proposal for a nationwide agreement on climate preparedness, accusing his administration of using climate change as a political tool to distract from shortcomings in managing natural disasters.
Party spokesperson Ester Muñoz argued that climate has always changed throughout Earth’s history and questioned the emphasis placed on human influence, saying the focus should instead be on how societies respond to changing environmental conditions.
The debate has also revived scrutiny of the People’s Party’s record during previous disasters.
Following the deadly floods that struck Valencia in October 2024, criticism mounted over the delayed response by the regional administration, which many believed slowed emergency coordination during the crisis.
Meanwhile, Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso has called on the central government to take greater responsibility for managing wildfire emergencies while continuing to question the scientific consensus surrounding climate change, describing it as an agenda promoted by political interests.
The far-right Vox party has also dismissed claims linking the current wildfire season to climate change.
Instead, the party argues that inadequate forest management, the accumulation of dry vegetation and insufficient investment in firefighting resources are the main causes of the destructive fires.
Climate scientists, however, maintain that the current wildfire crisis results from several interacting factors, including rising temperatures driven by climate change, abandoned rural landscapes and increasing amounts of highly combustible vegetation.
The climate debate intensified further after a Vox member of the European Parliament circulated what was presented as an official weather document claiming that temperatures above 44 degrees Celsius had already been recorded across Spain during the 1950s.
Spain’s national meteorological agency, Aemet, later dismissed the document as fabricated, explaining that almost all of the reported temperature records were false.
The agency added that while heatwaves have always occurred, scientific observations show they are now becoming more frequent, more intense and more persistent because of ongoing climate change, reinforcing the need for stronger climate action across Spain.
