POLAR winds hitting Spain mean thermals are being dug out and dusted off as snow lies thick on major highways in the north and inland – and on the Mediterranean and south coast, residents are now sometimes even having to wear a coat when they go out.
Freezing temperatures and snow are nothing unusual in a Spanish winter – after all, nearly everyone lives within less than half a day's drive from a ski resort or several, and it's the most mountainous country in the EU and second-most in Europe after Switzerland – and even in the warmest parts of the mainland, cold snaps between mid-December and late February can mean gloves and scarves, and an extra quilt on the bed.
Homes in typically chilly parts of Spain are normally built with central heating as standard, although on the Mediterranean, the islands and in the south, you're more likely to buy a property with air-con units that double up as heating, since the amount of use you'd get out of a walled-in piped system is not enough to justify the investment and upheaval of installing it.
And a much cheaper and more efficient way of keeping warm at home in winter in a sub-tropical climate is to buy a plug-in heated blanket and wear it over your shoulders; it's summer when body-temperature solutions become more difficult to find, and anyone with the skills to invent a 'cold' version of an electric blanket or 'reverse-thermal' underwear would probably become an instant millionaire.
In fact, some parts of Spain, when it comes to record cold temperatures, are fairly extreme – year-round, not just in winter – you might want to bookmark this page and refer back to it when July burns and sweats its way across the coasts, so you know where to take a road-trip for some instant respite.
That's because we're about to tell you where to find the towns in Spain for which you'll need to pack a thick coat and some woolly jumpers to visit, including in the usually-sweltering June-to-September period.
Spain's hottest town (and warmest winter cities)
If the mere mention of the adjective 'cold' is already giving you joint pains and throbbing nerve-endings, and your idea of paradise is California's Death Valley, the hottest town in Spain and the one you should seriously consider setting up home in is Montoro, in the land-locked Andalucía province of Córdoba.
Here, the highest-ever temperature in Spain's reliably-documented weather history was measured on July 13, 2017, at 47.3ºC in the shade – add on another 5ºC or 10ºC for the direct-sunlight effect, and those on the wrong side of the pavement or a few steps from the nearest tree would have discovered what 52.3ºC to 57.3ºC felt like.
That said, and although Montoro typically boasts annual record summer highs, as its weather station is on the 'secondary network', its figures have never counted for official purposes.
Although not ‘official’, the highest-ever temperature recorded in the shade in Spain was 47.3ºC in Montoro, Córdoba province (photo: David Daguerro/Wikimedia Commons)
As a result, the actual, concrete, set-in-stone, undisputed mercury champion is 46.9ºC in the shade (again, from 51.9ºC to 56.9ºC in the sun), on the very same day in 2017, in the grounds of Córdoba airport.
Generally, those who would be in their element basking in temperatures about halfway between freezing and boiling point should look to settle in the cities of Jaén, Sevilla or Córdoba, or just outside of these in the wider provinces, but at the lowest-possible altitude – although sunburn when thermometers dip below zero is frequent at high-up points, the 'real feel' is normally colder the farther up the hill you head; this is why snow is fairly common in the Greater Madrid region and even on the streets of the city in winter, given that at 657 metres above sea-level, it's the highest-altitude capital in the EU and the second-highest in Europe after Andorra la Vella.
Coastal cities that regularly register some of the warmest temperatures in Spain in summer and winter alike include Alicante, Almería and Murcia, in the south-east and bordered by the Mediterranean; the first two of these have, officially, the hottest daytimes during the country's coldest weeks of the year, in mid-January, at around 16.4ºC.
The 'Ice Triangle' and other chilly parts of Spain
Residents in the centre-northern region of Castilla y León would find a UK winter pleasant and springlike compared with their own – in the provinces of Palencia, Burgos and Ávila, especially, average mid-winter temperatures are similar to those of Reykjavík, Iceland, at around -2ºC at night and 6ºC in the 'hottest' part of the day.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com