Outdoor work in southern Europe's tourist hot spot is becoming hellish

Cruel heat is baking southern Europe as the continent slips deeper into summer.

- By JOSEPH WILSON, DEREK GATOPOULOS and TRISHA THOMAS

In homes and offices, air conditioning is sweet relief. But under the scorching sun, outdoor labor can be grueling, brutal, occasionally even deadly.

A street sweeper died in Barcelona during a heat wave last month and, according to a labor union, 12 other city cleaners have suffered heatstroke since. Some of Europe's powerful unions are pushing for tougher regulations to protect the aging workforce from climate change on the world's fastest-warming continent.

Cleaning the hot streets

Hundreds of street cleaners and concerned citizens marched through downtown Barcelona last week to protest the death of Montse Aguilar, a 51-year-old street cleaner who worked even as the city's temperatures hit a June record.

Fellow street sweeper Antonia Rodriguez said at the protest that blistering summers have made her work “unbearable.”

“I have been doing this job for 23 years and each year the heat is worse,” said Rodriguez, 56. “Something has to be done.”

Extreme heat has fueled more than 1,000 excess deaths in Spain so far in June and July, according to the Carlos III Health Institute.

“Climate change is, above all, playing a role in extreme weather events like the heat waves we are experiencing, and is having a big impact in our country,” said Diana Gémez, who heads the institute’s daily mortality observatory.