Students in Spain sent home as ‘sauna’ classroom reaches 32 degrees

Students and teachers in Spain have welcomed September and gone back to school, but for one unfortunate town in the Region of Murcia, the official start of autumn has not done away with the extreme heat. The CEIP Azorín educational institution in Molinos Marfagones, located in the municipality of Cartagena, has been forced to send students and staff home on Tuesday, September 8 after classroom temperatures reached alarming highs.

Classroom temperatures allegedly climb above 30 degrees

Families, parents, and legal guardians of the children were called to pick them up from 11:20am, after the temperatures in the classrooms of the school exceeded 27 degrees Celsius and even reached a reported 32 degrees, according to a member of the local Parent Teacher Association, or PTA.

The centre reportedly lacks air conditioning as well. According to the PTA, the school had plans to integrate an air conditioning system due to the extreme heat, but nothing has come of them just yet.

Parents demand classrooms rather than saunas

The school’s PTA is demanding “classrooms, not saunas” for the children, claiming temperatures had been soaring in the building since mid-morning that day. According to the Presidents of the Parents’ Association, or AMPA, Natalia Martín, who spoke to Spanish news outlet La Verdad, letters have already been submitted to both the Regional Government and the City Council regarding this matter.

“We’ve been demanding air conditioning for two years now. Not just for our school, but for all of them. We wrote to the City Council to inform them of the situation, and they replied, as we already knew, that it’s the responsibility of the Regional Ministry of Education. We haven’t received a response from them. Furthermore, we know that other families have done the same as us as an association and have submitted their own letters individually.”

School adapts schedules and safety measures to cope with extreme heat

For the students whose families and guardians were unable to pick them up when the announcement was issued, the school continued to provide care. Lunch and school buses continued to operate normally, but the school was forced to adapt some of its scheduled activities to accommodate the extreme temperatures. Staff also shifted plans to avoid outdoor activity during peak temperatures.

So far this 2026-2027 school year, it is the first time an incident like this has occurred in Cartagena. The measure of sending the students home was taken in accordance with the back-to-school guidelines issued by the Regional Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.

A growing air conditioning crisis across Spain: Scorching classrooms make studying increasingly more difficult

The incident has highlighted the importance of air conditioning in a place like a school or educational centre, where many people are together under one roof. Molinos Marfagones is far from the first town to experience soaring temperatures in classrooms, as many schools in Spain do not have air conditioning.

The Catalan capital of Barcelona, for example, carried out measures to provide thirty new schools with air conditioning this year under their Pla Clima Escola Barcelona plan. Other parents in places like Madrid and Valencia have filed complaints with local governments and pleas to install air conditioning, since the heat is no longer simply a mild discomfort but a hindrance to the students’ learning and the teachers’ work.

The CEIP Azorín educational institution was the site of a protest in June of this year, when concerned parents, staff, and members of the local community made signs to draw awareness to the extreme temperatures in the school and the lack of suitable air conditioning and cooling systems.