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One of the things we tell people considering a move to Galicia is that the climate here is mild, green, and forgiving compared to most of Spain. That’s generally true, but early July 2026 was a reminder that inland Galicia is not immune to real heat, and that when it does arrive, it arrives hard.
The region normally relies on the nordés, a northeasterly wind that acts as a kind of natural air conditioning, keeping the interior cooler than you’d expect this far south. That shield broke down over the first weekend of July, when a mass of hot air pushed temperatures in Ourense province up to 40 degrees. Authorities placed well over a hundred municipalities under a red alert, most of them concentrated in Ourense and Pontevedra, which meant suspended outdoor sports activities and an activated wildfire prevention plan. The Miño valley, which runs right past us here in Ribeira Sacra, saw temperatures in the high 30s, numbers that felt genuinely out of place for a region built around river mist and vineyard terraces rather than scorched plains.
Living through it day to day was less dramatic than the numbers suggest, but noticeable in small ways. The stone walls of the old houses here do their job, staying cool well into the afternoon, which is one of the quiet advantages of the traditional building style we’ve written about before. Outside was a different story. Even a short walk felt heavier than usual, the kind of heat where you notice it in your chest before your skin. Evenings didn’t cool down the way they normally do, and that lack of relief overnight is, if anything, harder to adjust to than the daytime peak.
The bigger concern locally wasn’t comfort, it was fire risk. Dry undergrowth combined with several days of sustained heat pushed wildfire danger to a serious level across the interior, and it’s the kind of thing you become more aware of once you actually live among the forests and vineyards rather than just visiting them. Reinforced firefighting resources and grounded aircraft on standby became part of the regional news cycle in a way that felt closer to home than it would have a year ago, before we moved here.
By the start of this week the worst of it had eased in most of Galicia, with red alerts scaled back significantly and cooler air returning along the coast and in parts of A Coruña. Inland areas, including the mountains of Ourense and parts of Lugo, held onto the warning a bit longer, and forecasters were already flagging a second round of heat arriving nationally within days. Galicia tends to get some relief before the rest of the country, but the pattern this year has been one heatwave overlapping into the next rather than a single isolated episode.
For anyone thinking about relocating here with the assumption that Galicia simply doesn’t do extreme heat, it’s worth adjusting that expectation slightly. The coast still behaves the way people expect, cool, breezy, forgiving. Inland Ribeira Sacra is a different microclimate, and a few times a summer it will remind you of that. What has stood out to us is less the temperature itself and more how quickly the whole region organizes around it, from official alerts down to how neighbors talk about the forest behind their houses. It’s not the version of Galicia most people picture, but it’s part of the reality of living here rather than just visiting in a mild month.
