OVIEDO, Spain

More than 120 schools in the Spanish region of Extremadura are allowing students to go home early from Monday due to extremely hot temperatures.

Temperatures in parts of the region are expected to soar beyond 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), and public schools generally do not have air conditioning.

Many classrooms do not even have access to fans.

“I’m picking up my child early because I don’t want her to get heat stroke. Several years ago, there was a similar heat episode, and the kids were suffocating in the classrooms,” Victor Sereno, a father of a student in Caceres, told local daily Hoy.

The adaptation measure to deal with rising temperatures was implemented in 2017 and gives parents the option to pick up their children around noon — just as the hottest part of the day begins to set in.

Spain is currently in the grips of what may be considered the earliest heatwave on record.

Parts of Spain have been under intense heat alerts since last Friday. Over the weekend, the hot weather advisories extended to around 80% of the country.

But fresh relief remains far off. On Monday, Spain’s meteorological agency said temperatures may not relent until Friday.

Although daytime temperatures are scorching, millions of Spanish residents and visitors can expect nighttime temperatures that do not dip below 20-25 degrees.

Between 1961-1990, on average, Spain would only see around five nights that hot per year. However, between 1991 and 2020, the average number of "tropical nights" more than doubled to 11, according to the climate scientist Dominic Roye.

The hot and dry conditions have also spurred several wildfires, although firefighters have brought the most serious ones under control.