Debate over banning short-distance flights takes off, but the cons outweigh the pros
Where to find the 'Laplands of Spain': Arctic winters and summer heat relief
08/01/2022
POLAR winds hitting Spain mean thermals are being dug out and dusted off as snow lies thick on major highways in the north and inland – and on the Mediterranean and south coast, residents are now sometimes even having to wear a coat when they go out.
Freezing temperatures and snow are nothing unusual in a Spanish winter – after all, nearly everyone lives within less than half a day's drive from a ski resort or several, and it's the most mountainous country in the EU and second-most in Europe after Switzerland – and even in the warmest parts of the mainland, cold snaps between mid-December and late February can mean gloves and scarves, and an extra quilt on the bed.
Homes in typically chilly parts of Spain are normally built with central heating as standard, although on the Mediterranean, the islands and in the south, you're more likely to buy a property with air-con units that double up as heating, since the amount of use you'd get out of a walled-in piped system is not enough to justify the investment and upheaval of installing it.
And a much cheaper and more efficient way of keeping warm at home in winter in a sub-tropical climate is to buy a plug-in heated blanket and wear it over your shoulders; it's summer when body-temperature solutions become more difficult to find, and anyone with the skills to invent a 'cold' version of an electric blanket or 'reverse-thermal' underwear would probably become an instant millionaire.
In fact, some parts of Spain, when it comes to record cold temperatures, are fairly extreme – year-round, not just in winter – you might want to bookmark this page and refer back to it when July burns and sweats its way across the coasts, so you know where to take a road-trip for some instant respite.
That's because we're about to tell you where to find the towns in Spain for which you'll need to pack a thick coat and some woolly jumpers to visit, including in the usually-sweltering June-to-September period.
Spain's hottest town (and warmest winter cities)
If the mere mention of the adjective 'cold' is already giving you joint pains and throbbing nerve-endings, and your idea of paradise is California's Death Valley, the hottest town in Spain and the one you should seriously consider setting up home in is Montoro, in the land-locked Andalucía province of Córdoba.
Here, the highest-ever temperature in Spain's reliably-documented weather history was measured on July 13, 2017, at 47.3ºC in the shade – add on another 5ºC or 10ºC for the direct-sunlight effect, and those on the wrong side of the pavement or a few steps from the nearest tree would have discovered what 52.3ºC to 57.3ºC felt like.
That said, and although Montoro typically boasts annual record summer highs, as its weather station is on the 'secondary network', its figures have never counted for official purposes.
As a result, the actual, concrete, set-in-stone, undisputed mercury champion is 46.9ºC in the shade (again, from 51.9ºC to 56.9ºC in the sun), on the very same day in 2017, in the grounds of Córdoba airport.
Generally, those who would be in their element basking in temperatures about halfway between freezing and boiling point should look to settle in the cities of Jaén, Sevilla or Córdoba, or just outside of these in the wider provinces, but at the lowest-possible altitude – although sunburn when thermometers dip below zero is frequent at high-up points, the 'real feel' is normally colder the farther up the hill you head; this is why snow is fairly common in the Greater Madrid region and even on the streets of the city in winter, given that at 657 metres above sea-level, it's the highest-altitude capital in the EU and the second-highest in Europe after Andorra la Vella.
Coastal cities that regularly register some of the warmest temperatures in Spain in summer and winter alike include Alicante, Almería and Murcia, in the south-east and bordered by the Mediterranean; the first two of these have, officially, the hottest daytimes during the country's coldest weeks of the year, in mid-January, at around 16.4ºC.
The 'Ice Triangle' and other chilly parts of Spain
Residents in the centre-northern region of Castilla y León would find a UK winter pleasant and springlike compared with their own – in the provinces of Palencia, Burgos and Ávila, especially, average mid-winter temperatures are similar to those of Reykjavík, Iceland, at around -2ºC at night and 6ºC in the 'hottest' part of the day.
And although Spain's current record low of -35.6ºC (at 07.06 on January 7, 2021) and its previous record low of -34.1ºC (at 05.19 on January 6, 2021) were in Vega de Liordes in the province of León, and Clot del Tuc de la Llança in Catalunya's Pyrénéen province of Lleida, respectively, the part of the country known as the 'Ice Triangle' is fair bit farther south-east.
Teruel, in southern Aragón – a region which starts at the Pyrénées and runs about a third of the way down the mainland, around an hour and a half inland from the coast – is the smallest provincial capital in Spain, at barely 36,000 inhabitants, and the province itself was the first to record the lowest December temperature in history at -30ºC, in 1963.
As a high-altitude province and home to two much-loved ski resorts, Teruel winters can frequently drop to around -7ºC in the daytime and double figures below at night, but the numbers reported a week before Christmas Eve just over 58 years ago in the village of Calamocha were truly unprecedented.
And little more than a decade earlier, Teruel city itself marked its coldest-known figure, of -28.2ºC, towards the end of January 1952.
Calamocha and the nearby provincial capital of Teruel make up one side of the 'Ice Triangle', as the area was baptised by weather scientist Vicente Aupí, and the 'freezing trinity' is completed with the town of Molina de Aragón in Castilla-La Mancha's province of Guadalajara, to the north-east of the wider Madrid region.
Here, on the same day as Calamocha's -30ºC, the mercury plunged to -28ºC.
A break from the summer heat: July nights of 0ºC and days in the low 20s
Already, we can probably make an educated guess as to which provinces the coldest towns in Spain are located in, so it won't shock you to hear that the location with the lowest summer temperatures in the country is also in that of Teruel.
Griegos, home to 138 people according to the 2020 census – but actively seeking new residents, ideally with children, to guarantee its population for future generations and to enable it to keep its school open – is in the heart of the Sierra de Albarracín mountain range, and about 74 kilometres from Teruel city.
With a population density of just 4.28 people per square kilometre, social distancing is not a problem and it doesn't matter if your neighbours are noisy, as you'd still have to strain your ears to hear their loud all-night party music at full volume.
The second-highest altitude village in Spain, at 1,604 metres above sea-level, Griegos regularly falls to -15ºC in winter – at the time of publication, late-evening figures were hovering at around -4ºC, which is fairly warm for the area in early January.
Average annual temperatures do not really give us much practical information about how hot or cold a place is; Mediterranean provinces are described as having an average yearly figure of 18ºC, but with summers of 30ºC to 35ºC and winters of 5ºC to 12ºC, the mean or median are purely academic.
That said, with an average annual temperature of 7.5ºC, visitors to Griegos say the ideal time of year to visit is late July; this is right at the height of the nation's hottest season, and during a heatwave, Griegos sometimes maxes out at around 25ºC.
A typical July temperature in Griegos is between 18ºC and 25ºC in the middle part of the day and between 3ºC and 12ºC at night, whilst either side of this month, from June to September inclusive, the midday highs hover around 21ºC.
It is not at all unusual for Griegos to drop to 0ºC on a high summer night, or around 7ºC to 8ºC on a high summer day, and outside the warmest three or four months of a Spanish year, practically never gets anywhere near 20ºC.
For this reason, Griegos is hugely popular with tourists seeking to escape the heat of the coast, and especially with those who love countryside and hiking but cannot do so for the best part of three months of the year because it is too hot anywhere else.
Climb up to the La Muela de San Juan to get a splendid view of rugged mountains in ever-changing colours in one of Spain's most beautiful provinces, and in the village itself, don't miss the Casa de las Mariposas ('House of Butterflies'), which is home to around 2,700 species of these attractive winged creatures.
More 'cool' places to visit in a Spanish summer
Other options for escaping the heat in the summer extremes include Alp (Girona province), where you can visit caves, go on cycling and quad tours and scuba-diving in lakes; Bellver de Cerdanya (Lleida province), with stunning country views and delectable local cuisine and a typical July temperature of around 19ºC; Cangas de Narcea (Asturias), where you can visit vineyards, the Wine Museum, the Fuentes de Narcea nature reserve and the Muniellos woodland in a climate that almost never goes above 25ºC at its hottest (mid-summer nights hover at around 13ºC, so neither too hot nor too cold); Cercedilla (Madrid), with a natural 'swimming pool', mountains, the Fuenfría Valley and the river Las Puentes to explore, and average July weather of 20ºC in the day and 11ºC at night; and Ezcaray (La Rioja), a ski resort in winter and mountain rambling hotspot in summer, with a beautiful historic quarter in the town itself and temperatures that rarely exceed 19ºC in July and August.
Average daytime thermometer readings in Isaba, in Navarra's Roncal Valley, are about 17.5ºC in summer – which often translates as a couple of fairly hot hours at lunchtime and a cardigan in late afternoon – and its winding, cobbled streets, original flint and wood houses with multiple-sloping roofs to stop snow building up on them, are surrounded by oceans of nature, the river Esca breathing life and greenery into them.
Pop through the famous San Isidro Gateway on the regional border of Asturias and Castilla y León in Puebla de Lillo (León province), deep in the heart of the Picos de Europa mountain range and National Park; here, the average daytime summer temperature is about 17ºC.
Cooler still in high summer is Sallent de Gállego, in the Alto Gállego district of Aragón's Pyrénéen province of Huesca, home to part of the Natural Glaciers Monument – eight huge rock formations over a 90-kilometre circle within the peaks that mark the French-Spanish border – green and dramatic, approximately 1,350 metres above sea level and with an average summer temperature of around 14ºC.
Molina de Aragón in the province of Guadalajara, at the apex of the 'Ice Triangle', hovers around the 12-14ºC mark in July and August, and the entire town is a national heritage site with monuments that tourist reviews say will 'leave you open-mouthed'.
If you want to be near water whilst escaping the summer heat, the north-western region of Galicia's uninhabited Cíes Isles are often described as 'like a Scottish Caribbean' – verdant, raw, with crystal-clear pale-blue waters and replete with wildlife, a micro-climate that gives the archipelago its very own weather system independent of whatever mainland Galicia is experiencing, and an average annual temperature of about 14ºC (low 20s in mid-summer, single figures in winter), this is one of Spain's most-visited and best-loved natural gems, but numbers are normally restricted to prevent their being damaged and disrupted through overcrowding, meaning forward planning is crucial when considering a trip.
'Arctic Spain': The village you need huskies to get to
None of these municipalities, though, hold the status of 'Coldest Town in Spain', although there is plenty of competition between them for the crown of 'Coldest Inhabited Town in Spain'.
Montgarri, on the south face of the Es Bandolèrs mountains in the Aran Valley, found at the gateway to the Pyrénees in Catalunya's only non-coastal province of Lleida, still qualified for the 'inhabited' bit in 2009, as it had four residents on the census.
It is not known whether, as at January 2022, anyone lives there at all, or whether the attraction of what could truly be dubbed the 'Lapland of Spain' has made its headcount swell, possibly even reaching double figures.
In any case, if Montgarri does, indeed, have any residents, they are thought to be few enough in number for this to be classified as an 'abandoned village'.
This might be because the hamlet bordered by the river Noguera Pallaresa can only be reached for much of the year by a husky-drawn sleigh.
At 1,645 metres above sea level, it would not be a revelation to hear that Montgarri was chilly in winter.
But an average annual temperature of 5ºC means even an English winter feels tropical by comparison.
Montgarri gets 180 frosts a year, so if they come once a day, it means six months of the year is slippery underfoot as a result of below-zero temperatures.
Like Griegos, winter figures can come in at -15ºC without making local news headlines, although in Montgarri these readings happen more often; in January, typical highs in the middle of the day are about 0ºC and nights normally around -8ºC, meaning ice and snow is a permanent part of the scenery around now.
July is, like elsewhere in Spain, the hottest month of the year, with an average temperature of 14ºC – nights and early mornings are about 8ºC, and the midday heat hardly ever breaks the 20ºC barrier.
Over two-thirds of its rainfall (1.2 metres, or 3'11”, per year) is in the form of snow and sleet, and Montgarri can easily be thickly coated in snow until well into the spring, with the mercury below zero at night as a matter of course until around May.
The village the sun forgot
It's largely the unique geographical and topographical layout of Montgarri that makes it so cold. Despite its altitude, the village is surrounded by mountains that are higher still, placing it in a valley and leaving it 'boxed in', trapped and swimming in its own pocket of freezing air, and with the sun almost completely blocked out.
Modern homes in Spain are often built with much larger windows, even entire glass walls or floor-to-ceiling French doors, so that the sun can pour in and heat the room without having to use energy, then solid Persian shutters or blackout blinds reduce the light and the rays to cool them down in summer. But in Montgarri, you could live in a greenhouse and still have goosebumps; although bright sunshine means clear, blue skies and natural light, the actual sunbeams do not get anywhere near your building.
This was mostly why Montgarri was abandoned. Its population started to leave in the 1960s, a time when heating only came from log or coal fires, two-thirds of Spain lived off the land, and that's not easy when said land is covered in snow. Homes were not built with modern insulation, and winter nights could be life-threatening.
It's not clear how Montgarri's people managed in the centuries leading up to the 1960s, though, and it seems they did, given that the Sanctuary, or village church (pictured above), was built between 1117 and 1119 after, according to legend, locals met the Virgin Mary on that very spot; after all, it must have had some inhabitants for someone to be able to meet the mother of Christ there, and to be able to use the Sanctuary for worship.
Snow-blocked winter roads mean sleighs replace cars
Getting to the only accommodation in Montgarri – the 'Refugi' (pictured below), which is very plush, a warm and cosy dry-stone-and-wooden-shutter affair – is not possible by car for about six months of the year. Instead, 'dog taxis' are thrown on, or sleighs pulled by working huskies, or you can travel from the car park several kilometres away on snow shoes, skis or a hired snowmobile.
Outside the winter, you can reach it by car along the country lane from the village of Alós de Isil, from the car park in Plá de Beret seven kilometres away, or on foot along the river Noguera tow-paths.
Local authorities in the Aran Valley are working on boosting tourism in the Montgarri area, especially given how close it is to the heavily-frequented Baqueira-Beret ski station, meaning perhaps one day, Spain's coldest village will start to become inhabited again.
In the meantime, though, it attracts plenty of visitors on rural holidays, especially skiing fans passing through, fascinated by the idea of a deserted town and to feel what it's like being in the nation's chilliest location.
Related Topics
POLAR winds hitting Spain mean thermals are being dug out and dusted off as snow lies thick on major highways in the north and inland – and on the Mediterranean and south coast, residents are now sometimes even having to wear a coat when they go out.
Freezing temperatures and snow are nothing unusual in a Spanish winter – after all, nearly everyone lives within less than half a day's drive from a ski resort or several, and it's the most mountainous country in the EU and second-most in Europe after Switzerland – and even in the warmest parts of the mainland, cold snaps between mid-December and late February can mean gloves and scarves, and an extra quilt on the bed.
Homes in typically chilly parts of Spain are normally built with central heating as standard, although on the Mediterranean, the islands and in the south, you're more likely to buy a property with air-con units that double up as heating, since the amount of use you'd get out of a walled-in piped system is not enough to justify the investment and upheaval of installing it.
And a much cheaper and more efficient way of keeping warm at home in winter in a sub-tropical climate is to buy a plug-in heated blanket and wear it over your shoulders; it's summer when body-temperature solutions become more difficult to find, and anyone with the skills to invent a 'cold' version of an electric blanket or 'reverse-thermal' underwear would probably become an instant millionaire.
In fact, some parts of Spain, when it comes to record cold temperatures, are fairly extreme – year-round, not just in winter – you might want to bookmark this page and refer back to it when July burns and sweats its way across the coasts, so you know where to take a road-trip for some instant respite.
That's because we're about to tell you where to find the towns in Spain for which you'll need to pack a thick coat and some woolly jumpers to visit, including in the usually-sweltering June-to-September period.
Spain's hottest town (and warmest winter cities)
If the mere mention of the adjective 'cold' is already giving you joint pains and throbbing nerve-endings, and your idea of paradise is California's Death Valley, the hottest town in Spain and the one you should seriously consider setting up home in is Montoro, in the land-locked Andalucía province of Córdoba.
Here, the highest-ever temperature in Spain's reliably-documented weather history was measured on July 13, 2017, at 47.3ºC in the shade – add on another 5ºC or 10ºC for the direct-sunlight effect, and those on the wrong side of the pavement or a few steps from the nearest tree would have discovered what 52.3ºC to 57.3ºC felt like.
That said, and although Montoro typically boasts annual record summer highs, as its weather station is on the 'secondary network', its figures have never counted for official purposes.
As a result, the actual, concrete, set-in-stone, undisputed mercury champion is 46.9ºC in the shade (again, from 51.9ºC to 56.9ºC in the sun), on the very same day in 2017, in the grounds of Córdoba airport.
Generally, those who would be in their element basking in temperatures about halfway between freezing and boiling point should look to settle in the cities of Jaén, Sevilla or Córdoba, or just outside of these in the wider provinces, but at the lowest-possible altitude – although sunburn when thermometers dip below zero is frequent at high-up points, the 'real feel' is normally colder the farther up the hill you head; this is why snow is fairly common in the Greater Madrid region and even on the streets of the city in winter, given that at 657 metres above sea-level, it's the highest-altitude capital in the EU and the second-highest in Europe after Andorra la Vella.
Coastal cities that regularly register some of the warmest temperatures in Spain in summer and winter alike include Alicante, Almería and Murcia, in the south-east and bordered by the Mediterranean; the first two of these have, officially, the hottest daytimes during the country's coldest weeks of the year, in mid-January, at around 16.4ºC.
The 'Ice Triangle' and other chilly parts of Spain
Residents in the centre-northern region of Castilla y León would find a UK winter pleasant and springlike compared with their own – in the provinces of Palencia, Burgos and Ávila, especially, average mid-winter temperatures are similar to those of Reykjavík, Iceland, at around -2ºC at night and 6ºC in the 'hottest' part of the day.
And although Spain's current record low of -35.6ºC (at 07.06 on January 7, 2021) and its previous record low of -34.1ºC (at 05.19 on January 6, 2021) were in Vega de Liordes in the province of León, and Clot del Tuc de la Llança in Catalunya's Pyrénéen province of Lleida, respectively, the part of the country known as the 'Ice Triangle' is fair bit farther south-east.
Teruel, in southern Aragón – a region which starts at the Pyrénées and runs about a third of the way down the mainland, around an hour and a half inland from the coast – is the smallest provincial capital in Spain, at barely 36,000 inhabitants, and the province itself was the first to record the lowest December temperature in history at -30ºC, in 1963.
As a high-altitude province and home to two much-loved ski resorts, Teruel winters can frequently drop to around -7ºC in the daytime and double figures below at night, but the numbers reported a week before Christmas Eve just over 58 years ago in the village of Calamocha were truly unprecedented.
And little more than a decade earlier, Teruel city itself marked its coldest-known figure, of -28.2ºC, towards the end of January 1952.
Calamocha and the nearby provincial capital of Teruel make up one side of the 'Ice Triangle', as the area was baptised by weather scientist Vicente Aupí, and the 'freezing trinity' is completed with the town of Molina de Aragón in Castilla-La Mancha's province of Guadalajara, to the north-east of the wider Madrid region.
Here, on the same day as Calamocha's -30ºC, the mercury plunged to -28ºC.
A break from the summer heat: July nights of 0ºC and days in the low 20s
Already, we can probably make an educated guess as to which provinces the coldest towns in Spain are located in, so it won't shock you to hear that the location with the lowest summer temperatures in the country is also in that of Teruel.
Griegos, home to 138 people according to the 2020 census – but actively seeking new residents, ideally with children, to guarantee its population for future generations and to enable it to keep its school open – is in the heart of the Sierra de Albarracín mountain range, and about 74 kilometres from Teruel city.
With a population density of just 4.28 people per square kilometre, social distancing is not a problem and it doesn't matter if your neighbours are noisy, as you'd still have to strain your ears to hear their loud all-night party music at full volume.
The second-highest altitude village in Spain, at 1,604 metres above sea-level, Griegos regularly falls to -15ºC in winter – at the time of publication, late-evening figures were hovering at around -4ºC, which is fairly warm for the area in early January.
Average annual temperatures do not really give us much practical information about how hot or cold a place is; Mediterranean provinces are described as having an average yearly figure of 18ºC, but with summers of 30ºC to 35ºC and winters of 5ºC to 12ºC, the mean or median are purely academic.
That said, with an average annual temperature of 7.5ºC, visitors to Griegos say the ideal time of year to visit is late July; this is right at the height of the nation's hottest season, and during a heatwave, Griegos sometimes maxes out at around 25ºC.
A typical July temperature in Griegos is between 18ºC and 25ºC in the middle part of the day and between 3ºC and 12ºC at night, whilst either side of this month, from June to September inclusive, the midday highs hover around 21ºC.
It is not at all unusual for Griegos to drop to 0ºC on a high summer night, or around 7ºC to 8ºC on a high summer day, and outside the warmest three or four months of a Spanish year, practically never gets anywhere near 20ºC.
For this reason, Griegos is hugely popular with tourists seeking to escape the heat of the coast, and especially with those who love countryside and hiking but cannot do so for the best part of three months of the year because it is too hot anywhere else.
Climb up to the La Muela de San Juan to get a splendid view of rugged mountains in ever-changing colours in one of Spain's most beautiful provinces, and in the village itself, don't miss the Casa de las Mariposas ('House of Butterflies'), which is home to around 2,700 species of these attractive winged creatures.
More 'cool' places to visit in a Spanish summer
Other options for escaping the heat in the summer extremes include Alp (Girona province), where you can visit caves, go on cycling and quad tours and scuba-diving in lakes; Bellver de Cerdanya (Lleida province), with stunning country views and delectable local cuisine and a typical July temperature of around 19ºC; Cangas de Narcea (Asturias), where you can visit vineyards, the Wine Museum, the Fuentes de Narcea nature reserve and the Muniellos woodland in a climate that almost never goes above 25ºC at its hottest (mid-summer nights hover at around 13ºC, so neither too hot nor too cold); Cercedilla (Madrid), with a natural 'swimming pool', mountains, the Fuenfría Valley and the river Las Puentes to explore, and average July weather of 20ºC in the day and 11ºC at night; and Ezcaray (La Rioja), a ski resort in winter and mountain rambling hotspot in summer, with a beautiful historic quarter in the town itself and temperatures that rarely exceed 19ºC in July and August.
Average daytime thermometer readings in Isaba, in Navarra's Roncal Valley, are about 17.5ºC in summer – which often translates as a couple of fairly hot hours at lunchtime and a cardigan in late afternoon – and its winding, cobbled streets, original flint and wood houses with multiple-sloping roofs to stop snow building up on them, are surrounded by oceans of nature, the river Esca breathing life and greenery into them.
Pop through the famous San Isidro Gateway on the regional border of Asturias and Castilla y León in Puebla de Lillo (León province), deep in the heart of the Picos de Europa mountain range and National Park; here, the average daytime summer temperature is about 17ºC.
Cooler still in high summer is Sallent de Gállego, in the Alto Gállego district of Aragón's Pyrénéen province of Huesca, home to part of the Natural Glaciers Monument – eight huge rock formations over a 90-kilometre circle within the peaks that mark the French-Spanish border – green and dramatic, approximately 1,350 metres above sea level and with an average summer temperature of around 14ºC.
Molina de Aragón in the province of Guadalajara, at the apex of the 'Ice Triangle', hovers around the 12-14ºC mark in July and August, and the entire town is a national heritage site with monuments that tourist reviews say will 'leave you open-mouthed'.
If you want to be near water whilst escaping the summer heat, the north-western region of Galicia's uninhabited Cíes Isles are often described as 'like a Scottish Caribbean' – verdant, raw, with crystal-clear pale-blue waters and replete with wildlife, a micro-climate that gives the archipelago its very own weather system independent of whatever mainland Galicia is experiencing, and an average annual temperature of about 14ºC (low 20s in mid-summer, single figures in winter), this is one of Spain's most-visited and best-loved natural gems, but numbers are normally restricted to prevent their being damaged and disrupted through overcrowding, meaning forward planning is crucial when considering a trip.
'Arctic Spain': The village you need huskies to get to
None of these municipalities, though, hold the status of 'Coldest Town in Spain', although there is plenty of competition between them for the crown of 'Coldest Inhabited Town in Spain'.
Montgarri, on the south face of the Es Bandolèrs mountains in the Aran Valley, found at the gateway to the Pyrénees in Catalunya's only non-coastal province of Lleida, still qualified for the 'inhabited' bit in 2009, as it had four residents on the census.
It is not known whether, as at January 2022, anyone lives there at all, or whether the attraction of what could truly be dubbed the 'Lapland of Spain' has made its headcount swell, possibly even reaching double figures.
In any case, if Montgarri does, indeed, have any residents, they are thought to be few enough in number for this to be classified as an 'abandoned village'.
This might be because the hamlet bordered by the river Noguera Pallaresa can only be reached for much of the year by a husky-drawn sleigh.
At 1,645 metres above sea level, it would not be a revelation to hear that Montgarri was chilly in winter.
But an average annual temperature of 5ºC means even an English winter feels tropical by comparison.
Montgarri gets 180 frosts a year, so if they come once a day, it means six months of the year is slippery underfoot as a result of below-zero temperatures.
Like Griegos, winter figures can come in at -15ºC without making local news headlines, although in Montgarri these readings happen more often; in January, typical highs in the middle of the day are about 0ºC and nights normally around -8ºC, meaning ice and snow is a permanent part of the scenery around now.
July is, like elsewhere in Spain, the hottest month of the year, with an average temperature of 14ºC – nights and early mornings are about 8ºC, and the midday heat hardly ever breaks the 20ºC barrier.
Over two-thirds of its rainfall (1.2 metres, or 3'11”, per year) is in the form of snow and sleet, and Montgarri can easily be thickly coated in snow until well into the spring, with the mercury below zero at night as a matter of course until around May.
The village the sun forgot
It's largely the unique geographical and topographical layout of Montgarri that makes it so cold. Despite its altitude, the village is surrounded by mountains that are higher still, placing it in a valley and leaving it 'boxed in', trapped and swimming in its own pocket of freezing air, and with the sun almost completely blocked out.
Modern homes in Spain are often built with much larger windows, even entire glass walls or floor-to-ceiling French doors, so that the sun can pour in and heat the room without having to use energy, then solid Persian shutters or blackout blinds reduce the light and the rays to cool them down in summer. But in Montgarri, you could live in a greenhouse and still have goosebumps; although bright sunshine means clear, blue skies and natural light, the actual sunbeams do not get anywhere near your building.
This was mostly why Montgarri was abandoned. Its population started to leave in the 1960s, a time when heating only came from log or coal fires, two-thirds of Spain lived off the land, and that's not easy when said land is covered in snow. Homes were not built with modern insulation, and winter nights could be life-threatening.
It's not clear how Montgarri's people managed in the centuries leading up to the 1960s, though, and it seems they did, given that the Sanctuary, or village church (pictured above), was built between 1117 and 1119 after, according to legend, locals met the Virgin Mary on that very spot; after all, it must have had some inhabitants for someone to be able to meet the mother of Christ there, and to be able to use the Sanctuary for worship.
Snow-blocked winter roads mean sleighs replace cars
Getting to the only accommodation in Montgarri – the 'Refugi' (pictured below), which is very plush, a warm and cosy dry-stone-and-wooden-shutter affair – is not possible by car for about six months of the year. Instead, 'dog taxis' are thrown on, or sleighs pulled by working huskies, or you can travel from the car park several kilometres away on snow shoes, skis or a hired snowmobile.
Outside the winter, you can reach it by car along the country lane from the village of Alós de Isil, from the car park in Plá de Beret seven kilometres away, or on foot along the river Noguera tow-paths.
Local authorities in the Aran Valley are working on boosting tourism in the Montgarri area, especially given how close it is to the heavily-frequented Baqueira-Beret ski station, meaning perhaps one day, Spain's coldest village will start to become inhabited again.
In the meantime, though, it attracts plenty of visitors on rural holidays, especially skiing fans passing through, fascinated by the idea of a deserted town and to feel what it's like being in the nation's chilliest location.
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YET again and for the 36th year running, Spain holds the record for the highest number of blue-flagged beaches in the world, with its east-coast region of the Comunidad Valenciana having more than any other.
SPANISH petroleum giant CEPSA has struck a deal with Etihad airlines to work on carbon-free flights in the near future, and will be undertaking extensive research on how to produce aircraft fuel from clean and renewable...
EVEN people who struggle to stifle a yawn at the mention of the word 'history' shouldn't rule out visiting museums on trips to Spain – unless they also hate chocolate, toys, beer, arts and crafts, space,...