Environment

I arrived back in Newcastle, my home city, the day before a two-ship collision in my local port, on the River Tyne. Just a few days later, I found our local beach blanketed in a snow of tiny white plastic pellets, so I grabbed my camera and started documenting what had happened. What began as a photographic record of a historic pollution spill quickly became something much bigger: an archive of an unprecedented grassroots community response involving thousands of residents.

Hidden behind an unassuming metal gate on Calle Doctor Fourquet 24, the self-managed garden became a living lesson. My students planted seeds that would grow into vegetables, observed insects and raked up fallen leaves. They played with neighbors of different generations, and discovered that learning could happen through caring for a shared place.

Spain was one of many European countries hit by record-breaking heat this summer. For three straight weeks in August, temperatures across the Iberian Peninsula soared past 40°C, with no relief after dark. Nights stayed above 26°C, a clear sign of the Urban Heat Island effect, where asphalt and concrete trap the day’s heat and release it slowly at night, preventing temperatures from naturally cooling off.

At around midnight on Monday, just as the temperature was finally becoming cool enough to open the windows for the night, local government advice was to keep them shut. If you did open them, the dense smoke blowing in from Tres Cantos in the north of Madrid was overpowering.

I've seen very little on the news about progress in the flood-hit areas of Valencia, so I was curious to head back there to report on this myself. The clean-up operations by volunteers and public services have been incredible. At first glance, life appears to have resumed to relative normality but Paiporta so quiet.

On Friday, I visited Paiporta, one of the worst-affected towns in Valencia . From La Rambleta, I walked around 45 minutes to arrive to the focus point of the flood damage. En route, I pass a school where kids are handing out gloves, hand sanitiser and masks and are wishing volunteers all the best.

As rescue and recovery operations in Valencia’s flood-hit towns and barrios are underway, Madrid residents are donating food, hygiene products and clothes to municipal collection points run by mostly volunteers.

A DANA (a mass of high-altitude cold air mixes with warm humid air from the Mediterranean) hit Spain yesterday, affecting Madrid and Toledo the worst. Emergency services responded to around 1,500 incidents of people trapped in their cars and homes, which left two people dead and two more missing.

Urban Heat Snapshot (UHS), a research project by Arup university, studied and compared the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) of six major cities: Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai and New York. Results revealed that out of all six cities, Madrid’s UHIE was the most extreme.

On Monday, less than 24 hours after the election in which we saw the right lose nationally, the same right-wing-run city council began preparations for works on Calle Áncora to expand Madrid’s metro network. These works come at the sacrifice of over 1000 mature trees, which residents are strongly resisting.

Pool tickets go on sale online 49 hours before doors open. Within two or three minutes, all 585 tickets to the city centre’s only public outdoor pool, Peñuelas, are gone. Over the past few weeks, a conspiracy theory grew that a few people were monopolising tickets, booking them quickly and then selling them off to their friends. The theory appeared partly true when a 400-strong neighbourhood WhatsApp group called ‘Peñuelas pool’ hit the headlines, with members being called a “mafia of families”.

A group of local activists launched the citizens’ initiative #termometrada on Saturday with the aim of regularly reading temperatures in 169 locations around Madrid. Measurements will be taken at various times of the day: at sunrise, two hours after sunset, and at 5pm, when heat peaks across the city. Readings are taken electronically, at head-height and in the shade. After several minutes, the reading will settle and can be recorded.

On Tuesday 16 May, around 5000 firefighters from Coordinadora Unitaria de Bomberos Profesionales (CUBP) travelled from all over Spain to the capital to demonstrate their frustrations over government delays in updating a law that, if approved, would allow firefighting services across the country to tackle incidents based on which unit is closest.

In winter 2021, Madrid experienced the worst snowstorm in 300 years and lost around 80,000 trees. A year later, the city council planted 90,620 saplings, but by summer – the city's hottest on record – 77% of them had died. Ecologistas en Acción explained: “They left the saplings abandoned and without watering at the height of summer,” rightly claiming that this mass recklessness could and should have been prevented.