WATCH: Environment protestors scale statue in Spain to get climate change message across

PROTESTORS in Spain have scaled the 60-metre (197 ft) statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona to protest about the political indifference against the climate crisis during the country’s general electoral campaign.

The environmental action group said their activists ‘peacefully’ scaled the monument before unfurling a banner with the message: Climatic emergency. Think, vote, act.’

Protestors also put a giant snorkel and goggles on the statue of the explorer to highlight one of the effects of climate change – rising sea levels.

Greenpeace claim that Spain is the most vulnerable country in Europe to climate change, where the average temperature has already risen 1.5º Celsius in the last three decades. And they say that, according to the latest analysis of Spain’s AEMET state Met Office, we already have summers almost five weeks longer than at the beginning of the 1980s.

The Columbus Monument stands at the lower end of La Rambla in Barcelona. It was constructed for the Exposición Universal de Barcelona (1888) in honour of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. The monument serves as a reminder that Christopher Columbus reported to Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand V in Barcelona after his first trip to the new continent.

🔴¡ACCIÓN! Denunciamos en la estatua de Colón de Barcelona la indiferencia política frente a la crisis climática durante la campaña electoral
👉 https://t.co/MEfituNC6r
#UrgenciaClimática #JornadaDeReflexión pic.twitter.com/NmFoz7HDwp

— Greenpeace España (@greenpeace_esp) April 27, 2019