{"id":34020,"date":"2026-06-03T14:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/34020\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:03:10","slug":"spain-health-ministry-sets-temperatures-harmful-to-health-alerts-with-a-maximum-threshold-of-37c-in-mallorca-spain-records-highest-number-of-may-heat-related-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/34020\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain Health Ministry sets temperatures harmful to health alerts, with a maximum threshold of 37\u00b0C in Mallorca: Spain records highest number of May heat-related deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spanish Ministry of Health<\/a> has updated the maximum temperature thresholds above which excessive heat triggers health risks and associated mortality, ranging from 25.7 degrees on the coasts of Asturias and Gipuzkoa to 41.5 degrees in the Seville countryside, whilst the highest level in the Balearics<\/a> is set at 37 degrees in the interior of Mallorca<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Minister of Health, M\u00f3nica Garc\u00eda, and the department\u2019s Head of Health and Climate Change<\/a>, H\u00e9ctor Tejero, presented on Wednesday the 2026 National Plan for Preventive Measures against the Health Effects of Excessive Temperatures, which has set these new thresholds following an exhaustive review of historical mortality and heat data in Spain<\/a>, incorporating new methodological criteria.<\/p>\n

The plan, which was activated on 14 May and runs until mid-September, although it can be extended for a further 15 days, continues to divide the map, as the two previous ones did, into 182 areas known as \u2018meteo-health\u2019 zones; for this campaign, temperature thresholds have been determined through a statistical analysis of the association between time series of mortality from natural causes and daily maximum temperatures.<\/p>\n

The time series used for this calculation includes all daily cases recorded between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2023, but 2020 and 2021 have been excluded due to significant mortality anomalies, likely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. For every degree that the ambient temperature exceeds these peaks, the risk of mortality attributable to high temperatures increases by between 9.1% and 10.7%; in other words, for every day there is an extreme heatwave<\/a>, mortality increases, on average, by three deaths per day.<\/p>\n

Given the great variability across the region, the plan calculates thresholds based on the characteristics of each weather<\/a>-health zone; thus, the highest thresholds are reserved for areas in Andalusia (ranging from 27.1 degrees in the Strait or 30.6 in Sol and Guadalhorce to 41.3 in the Cordoba countryside or 41.5 in Seville, the highest in the whole of Spain), and in Extremadura (41.3 in Vegas del Guadiana).<\/p>\n

In Castilla-La Mancha, the highest value is found in the La Mancha area of Ciudad Real (40.1 degrees); in Arag\u00f3n, in the Lower Arag\u00f3n region of Teruel (39.7); in Madrid, in the southern, Vegas and western parts (39.2); in Galicia, which shows considerable variability, in the south of Ourense (38.6); in Murcia, Vega del Segura (38.2) and, in the Valencian Community, in the interior of Valencia (38).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Castile and Le\u00f3n, the maximum threshold is on the Soria Plateau (37.7), the same as in the Central Depression of Lleida; in the Balearics, in the interior of Mallorca (37); in Navarre, in the Ebro River Valley (36.9), which drops to 35.2 in the Ebro River Valley in La Rioja. In the Canary Islands, it is found in La Gomera (32.2). The lowest thresholds, meanwhile, are located on the eastern coast of Asturias and Gipuzkoa (25.7), one degree lower than on the Cantabrian coast (26.7).<\/p>\n

Four risk levels
The 182 zones are defined according to areas with similar climatological patterns of Adverse Meteorological Phenomena (AMP) established by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which allows alerts to be tailored to the specific vulnerability of each local population.<\/p>\n

In cases where areas had a data gap of more than 10%, \u2018mirror zones\u2019 have been used to assign the corresponding provincial percentile, ensuring full coverage of the national territory. This is what has happened, for example, with the Sierra de Tramontana (Balearics), which uses the northern part of Mallorca as a mirror, or the County of Trevi\u00f1o (Burgos), which relies on the Llanada Alavesa.<\/p>\n

Using a decision algorithm based on the persistence of forecast temperatures above the threshold for three consecutive days, the plan assigns four distinct levels of health risk: The levels are identified by colour: 0 (Green), meaning no risk; 1 (Yellow), or low; 2 (Orange), or medium; and finally, 3 (Red), high. Each level is associated with a series of measures to minimise these risks, taking into account the population most vulnerable to excessive heat: children, the elderly (especially those aged 75 and over), people with chronic illnesses and pregnant women.<\/p>\n

Every year, the health authorities reiterate a series of tips to combat the effects of the heat: drink water frequently, even if you do not feel thirsty, avoiding drinks containing caffeine, alcohol or excessive sugar; stay in cool or air-conditioned places and reduce physical activity during the middle of the day, as well as keeping medicines in cool places to prevent the heat from altering their composition.<\/p>\n

Spain recorded its highest heat-related mortality for the month of May since records began in 2015, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday after many parts of \u200cEurope experienced \u200brecord heat. \u200cAccording to \u200cestimates by Spain’s daily mortality monitoring system, \u200bMay 2026 recorded 101 \u200bdeaths attributable to high \u200ctemperatures, the highest figure for this month since the series began in 2015. <\/p>\n

The number \u2060is 3.6 times the average \u200bfor \u200bMay \u200cover the last decade, highlighting the significant health impact of \u200cextreme heat even before the start of northern hemisphere summer<\/a>, the Health Ministry said. The monitoring \u2060system, or MoMo \u200cfor short, estimates that 27,564 deaths were attributable to high temperatures in \u200bSpain between 2015 \u200cand \u200c2025. 2022 was the worst year on record, with 4,789 deaths, followed by 2025 with 3,832. \u2060The \u200brisk of mortality rises by between \u200b9.1% and 10.7% for each degree that temperatures exceed \u200cthe health risk threshold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spanish Ministry of Health has updated the maximum temperature thresholds above which excessive heat triggers health risks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1254,8718,1512,16233,373,8381,4496,598,605,599,16595,600,17,603,3829],"class_list":["post-34020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-balearics","tag-beach","tag-climate-change","tag-global-warming","tag-health","tag-heat-alert","tag-heatwave","tag-holiday","tag-latest-headlines","tag-majorca","tag-majorca-temperatures","tag-mallorca","tag-spain","tag-summer","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}