Galicia in Spain sets heat record while Valencia swelters through 30-degree nights

Galicia records its warmest July as the Mediterranean bakes at 30 degrees overnight

Galicia has just posted its warmest July in its historical record, after chaining the second-hottest June ever measured. The official data offer no relief, but everyday experience draws an uncomfortable map: in Pontevedra people still sleep under a blanket while Valencia endures two months of nights at nearly 30 degrees. The Galician record coexists with the widespread feeling that summer bites hardest on the Mediterranean coast.

The northwestern records are not felt on the pillow. Someone living in Pontevedra does not recognize the apocalyptic summer; someone suffering Valencia's humidity has gone weeks without sleeping. The contrast is not new: the Mediterranean has always been a punishing climate, one of the reasons the historic bourgeoisie sought refuge in the north. What is striking now is the coexistence of a record July in Galicia with hellish nights in the east, and the difficulty averages have in reflecting that thermal divide.

Some argue that the novelty is not the heat but the attention we pay to it. It is the comfortable thesis, the one that turns into exaggeration what in Valencia are two months of nights that never drop below 30 degrees. But there is the other side too: records are being broken, data are falling, and the current summer already has two historic milestones to its name. That a blanket in Pontevedra and a fan in Valencia coexist in the same country is exactly what record statistics cannot capture.

If the trend holds, the next wave of records will arrive sooner than expected and in increasingly unlikely places. But climate memory is short: next year we will debate whether these records were history or habit. Probably both.