Weather, energy, employment: how Spain leads the way this summer

Spain has many reasons to be cheerful as the height of summer approaches.

The balmy summer season is received very differently all over Europe.

In Edinburgh, August means a busy month of comedy and performance on its – often windy and chilly – streets as the Fringe Festival takes hold; for France it means reaching people in any office is nigh-on impossible as seemingly the entire country decamps to the, well, campsites that dot the southern reaches of the nation, and for Brits and Germans it means fleeing their own unpredictable weather for the reliably warm embrace of Spain…

These rituals arrive like clockwork every year, but this year Spain has a few tricks up its sleeve sure to impress even its harshest critics.

Number one is not so surprising, really: holidaymakers lucky enough to be sunning themselves on Spain’s stunning shoreline this week may well find that the mercury pushes past 40C, reaching as high as 45C in some southern, inland regions.

This is hot. Not never-seen-before hot, but above average for this time of year. These temperatures also give Spain the distinction of being the hottest country in Europe right now – quite an accolade, given the heatwave that has been shuffling across a sweaty southeast Europe.

But there is more. Not content with taking the temperature-top-spot, Spain has also just posted the sixth consecutive monthly decline in joblessness, meaning that the country has enjoyed a more sustained recovery of employment than any other in Europe this year.

Job’s a good ‘un. And Spain is not finished. It has emerged this week that Spain is also set to close its oldest nuclear power plant due to a lack of support in keeping it open among politicians and locals. The Santa María de Garona plant in the north of the country has been inactive since 2013, and will now finally close officially as the country pours its energy and resources into renewable power – namely solar and wind.

These three facts may all seem disconnected. And in most ways, they are. But they do paint a picture of a country on the up: confident, popular, growing, and increasingly making the right decisions for long term good health.