As Spain continues to suffer under successive heatwave events that claimed more than 1,000 lives last month, Barcelona’s authorities have begun distributing smart bracelets designed to monitor the body temperature of outdoor workers, functioning as an early warning system against potentially life-threatening health risks. Nearly 1,400 bracelets have been distributed in total, reaching street cleaners, lighting crews, park workers, and other outdoor municipal staff.
Read also: Spain: Over 1,000 dead from the heatwave in June — the first half of 2026 broke every heat record
Spain heatwave: The bracelet that measures body temperature
The decision was made in response to an “increasingly aggressive” climate crisis, according to Pep Limona, prevention coordinator for the city’s parks service. The bracelet continuously monitors the body temperature of outdoor workers and emits an audible alert when it detects a dangerous threshold has been reached — at which point the worker must immediately stop working. The measure comes as a growing number of outdoor workers in Spain have lost their lives to extreme heat in recent years.
Heat-related deaths more than doubled in June
According to data released by the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid, more than 1,000 heat-related deaths were recorded across Spain in June — a period during which several European countries faced intense heatwave conditions. The total number of deaths attributed to the heat reached at least 1,028.
This figure represents more than double the 407 heat-related deaths recorded in June 2025, which was itself the hottest June ever documented since Spain’s national meteorological agency, Aemet, began keeping statistical records.
Aemet also announced that the first half of 2026 as a whole was “the hottest ever recorded” in Spain, with average temperatures running 1.6 degrees Celsius above normal levels. “The seven hottest first-half periods” in records dating back to 1961 “have all occurred within the last ten years,” the agency noted in a post on X.
