MADRID — Heat killed an estimated 2,912 people in Spain between June and September, the national health institute said on Monday, the highest seasonal toll since the record summer of 2022 and a figure that for the second year running exceeded the number of people who died on the country’s roads.
The estimate, produced by the Carlos III Health Institute’s daily mortality monitoring system, compares observed deaths with the number expected for the time of year and attributes the excess to temperature. Nearly three-quarters of the victims were over 75, and the deadliest week came not in July but in the last days of August, when a late heat wave pushed temperatures past 42 degrees Celsius, about 108 Fahrenheit, across Extremadura, Andalusia and the Ebro valley.
“The pattern has changed,” said Dr. Rosa Ibarguren, an epidemiologist who oversees the monitoring program. “Ten years ago we planned for a peak in mid-July. Now the dangerous weeks arrive in late August and September, when people have let their guard down, the public pools are closing and the holiday relief staff have gone home.”
Inland provinces fared worst. Badajoz, Córdoba and Zaragoza each recorded excess mortality more than double the national rate, while the Atlantic coast and the Canary Islands were largely spared. The institute’s figures are statistical estimates rather than counts of individual death certificates, which rarely list heat as a cause, and officials cautioned that the true toll could be higher.
The government’s heat plan, first drawn up after the deadly summer of 2003, now triggers alerts in 182 meteorological zones and requires regional health services to telephone registered vulnerable patients when red warnings are issued. Antonio Garrido, who runs the heat response for the regional health service in Extremadura, said his teams made 61,000 such calls this summer. “It works when we reach people,” he said. “The problem is the widow on the fourth floor without an elevator, whose children live in Barcelona and who is not on anybody’s list.”
In the Seville neighborhood of Triana, Mercedes Alcázar, 78, said she had spent most of August in the air-conditioned lobby of a bank. “My flat is on the top floor and the roof is black,” she said. “The city put up a shade sail over the plaza, which is lovely, but it does not help me at 3 in the morning.” Seville has installed 14 such canopies since 2023 and this year opened its first “climate shelters,” air-conditioned libraries and civic centers that stay open until midnight on alert days.
Spain is warming faster than the global average, and the national weather agency has recorded seven of the 10 hottest summers in its 65-year series since 2015. A government study published in July estimated that heat already costs the economy about 0.4 percent of output each summer in lost productivity, chiefly in construction and agriculture, where a 2023 rule now bars outdoor work during red alerts.
Dr. Ibarguren said the institute would begin publishing a weekly heat mortality bulletin next summer, in the same format as its flu reports. “People understand flu season,” she said. “They need to understand that this is a season too.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 16 of the European edition with the headline: Spain Attributes 2,900 Deaths to Summer Heat, the Highest Toll Since the 2022 Record.
