School canceled all week in Spain’s Canary Islands due to extreme heat

OVIEDO, Spain

Authorities announced on Tuesday that all schools in Spain’s Canary Islands will shut down from Wednesday to Monday due to extreme heat.

Fernando Martin, principal at the Santiago Santana High School in Las Palmas, told Spanish broadcaster TVE that since early last week, five or six students a day have asked for medical treatment for heat-related problems like fainting or heat stroke.

In the Canary Islands, where temperatures are relatively mild during the school year, very few classrooms are equipped with air conditioning.

Poli Suarez, the local minister for education, said the government was closing classrooms out of “responsibility.”

“Meanwhile, we are preparing a protocol, which doesn’t currently exist, that says how we need to act during high temperatures like this, which I’m afraid are here to stay,” he said.

A heat wave has gripped the Canary Islands for around 10 days, with the islands recording its second-highest October temperature on record last Wednesday -- 40.6C (105.8F).

Last Sunday, the islands broke their record for the hottest October night in history. The mercury did not dip below 27.7C (82F) all day or night on the island of Gran Canaria.

The extreme heat in the Canary Islands is set to remain until Monday. Meanwhile, firefighters are still struggling to deal with the reactivation of a massive fire that burned this summer on the island of Tenerife.

Almost 5,000 migrants, who just reached the Spanish islands this month from Africa, are also fighting the heat. Many migrants are sleeping in plastic shelters as the islands struggle to cope with the influx of irregular arrivals.

However, it is not just the Canary Islands dealing with extreme heat.

On Wednesday, Spain’s meteorological agency Aemet said that the summer-like heat since late September across the country may represent the most abnormal heat in Spain since record-keeping began — around 6C hotter than the average from 1991 to 2020.