Toddler found dead 'after being forgotten' in car in Spain during 35C afternoon as heatwave grips Europe

Daily Mail​

01-07-2025

A toddler has been found dead after being 'forgotten' inside a car in Spain as temperatures soared to 35C during a horror heatwave affecting southern Europe.
The boy, believed to be aged around two-years-old, was found inside his father's car on an industrial estate in the Costa Dorada town of Valls at 3pm Tuesday afternoon.
Firefighters were the first to reach the scene and attempted to revive him with help from emergency medical responders who arrived soon after.
The boy had been removed from the vehicle and taken into an area with air conditioning where his dad worked while he and colleagues waited for help to arrive.
After carrying out CPR on the young boy, they discovered he had gone into cardiac arrest.
Efforts to save his life were tragically unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police sources revealed the toddler's father had arrived for work at around 9am and forgotten the child in his seat in the back of his car.
A horrified colleague is said to have alerted him some six hours later after passing by the car on the industrial estate and spotting the child inside.
The unnamed dad was quizzed by cops this afternoon at a local police station but it was not immediately clear if he had been formally arrested.
Detectives are reportedly working on the theory that the child died from heat exhaustion and dehydration after being left in the vehicle in staggering 35C heat.
Psychologists have been pulled in to provide the youngster's family support following the tragic incident.
More than 100 deaths since Saturday have been linked to Spain's first summer heatwave.
Health warnings have remained in effect across several European countries with the worst levels of heat felt in southern Europe. Punishing temperatures were forecast to reach 40C in Paris and are set to stay unusually high in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The abnormally hot weather 'is exposing millions of Europeans to high heat stress' with temperatures in June more typical of July and August, said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
This June is likely to among the five hottest on record, it said.
Barcelona's Fabra Observatory reported an average temperature for last month of 26C, breaking records since books were started in 1914.
The previous hottest average for June was 25.6C in 2003. The same weather station said that a single-day high of 37.9C for June was recorded Monday.
Barcelona is usually spared the worst heat in Spain, thanks to its location between hills and the Mediterranean in Spain's northeastern corner.
But most of the country has been gripped by the extreme heat.
'We are seeing these temperatures because we are experiencing a very intense heat wave that has come early in the summer and that is clearly linked to global warming,' Ramón Pascual, a delegate for Spain's weather service in Barcelona, said on Tuesday.
Pascual added that the inhabitants of the Mediterranean region are not being helped by the rising sea temperatures, which greatly reduces any cooling effects of a nearby body of water.
Spain's weather service said that recent surface temperatures for the Mediterranean near the Balearic Islands are between five-to-six degrees Celsius higher than average.
'With water surface temperatures from 26 to 30 Celsius, it is difficult for our nights to be refreshing,' he said.
Spain's national average for June of 23.6C was 0.8C hotter than the previous hottest June in 2017.
It was also that first time that June was hotter than the average temperatures for both July and August.
Spain also saw a new high mark for June established on Saturday when 46C was recorded in the southern province of Huelva.
The streets were scorching as well in Spain's capital, with Madrid forecast to reach 39C, as people tried to keep cool by drinking refrigerated drinks and sticking to the shade. But the hot nights offered little relief.
'Today is very bad, but yesterday wasn't any better. So we're just surviving,' said Miguel Sopera, 63. 'At night it's impossible due to the terrible heat.'
But Tuesday's tragedy was not the first of its kind. In May a boy aged nearly two died in the town of Linares in the Andalusian province of Jaen after being found trapped inside a car in eighty degree heat.
It later emerged the youngster had been forgotten inside the vehicle by his OAP foster father.
The man, named only as Rafael, made a public apology through his lawyer for leaving little Juanjo inside his car after forgetting to drop him to his nursery and driving back home with him.
The court investigation into the youngster's death is still ongoing.
In April a three-year-old child died after his 39-year-old aunt 'forgot' to drop him off at nursery and left him sleeping on the back seat of her car in searing heat in Brazil.
She went to work and only realised six hours later what she had done when she returned to the vehicle on a lunch break - alerting police and firefighters who rushed the youngster 'in a bad way' to hospital where he suffered fatal cardiac arrest.
The tragedy happened in the city of Sao Jose de Rio Preto in the province of Sao Paulo.
Detectives said at the time they had launched a manslaughter probe.