Lessons on climate change from Spain

Drought in Spain, a masia in Catalunya, plus a tomato rockstar from the Basque region and a hunt for Game of Thrones locations ....

Earlier this month I popped over to Spain for a few days to visit some gardens and look at urban trees and some of the problems associated with climate change.

Climate change is affecting Southern Europe badly. The area has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world over the last 30 years, with record low river levels, droughts, crop failures and widespread forest fires. Spain is expected to experience 2℃ of warming over the next 20 years, with the worst case scenario predicting 4℃ of warming by the end of the century. Its not looking good.

More droughts, fires and floods

Spain is already experiencing higher temperatures, droughts, more high intensity fires, and floods. There has been a prolonged drought for three years, exacerbated by record high temperatures in 2022 and 2023. In 2023, some areas of Almeria didn’t see any rain at all for more than 150 days, before storms delivered around 200mm of water in a week, with the torrential rain causing widespread flooding.

At the time of…