A two-year-old girl has died of heatstroke in northwestern Spain after being accidentally left in her father's car during an unseasonably hot spell, with temperatures expected to reach 38C in some areas.
The child, who has not been named, went into cardiac arrest on Wednesday afternoon after spending several hours inside the vehicle in the Galician town of Brión. According to media reports, the father had driven his older child to school and intended to drop the toddler at nursery but was distracted by a phone call and went to work instead.
The alarm was raised when the girl's mother went to pick her up from nursery at 3pm and was told she had not been dropped off. The parents called emergency services, and the girl was taken to a health centre in nearby Bertamiráns, where she was pronounced dead. Police are investigating, and the family is receiving psychological support.
Brión town council declared two days of official mourning and said a minute's silence would be held on Friday. Spain's state meteorological office, Aemet, said the "exceptionally high temperatures" could reach 36-38C in southern parts, potentially breaking heat records for May. The hot spell is expected to last until mid-next week.
A 2022 Aemet study found that the arrival of 30C temperatures across Spain and the Balearic Islands had come 20-40 days earlier on average over the previous 71 years, with a spokesperson describing the trend as "the summer eating up the spring" and a direct consequence of climate change.
