The heat is getting worse every year and, correspondingly, so is the impact on the labor effects of this climatic phenomenon. In recent years, the inspection body has increased its attention to business non-compliance related to high temperatures, according to data provided by the Ministry of Labor to EL PAÍS. Inspection actions are growing and, hand in hand, so are the sanctions and amounts with which companies are punished, which go from 706,000 euros in the summer of 2022 to 1.56 million in the same period of 2025.
According to the figures provided by the ministry on which the Inspection depends, from June to September 2022, 4,620 actions related to exposure to high temperatures were carried out, a figure that fell in 2023 (3,290) and 2024 (4,240), but skyrocketed in 2025 (10,820). They are more than double that at the beginning of the series, when the ministry began to count this type of actions in the summer period.
When inspectors notice any non-compliance, they issue a request to the company in question. In 2022 there were 3,140; in 2023, 2,310; in 2024, 2,720; and in 2025, 4,750. “Faced with a reality in which adverse phenomena are increasingly frequent, together with greater social awareness regarding the danger of high temperatures, there is more planned activity on the part of the Inspection, which makes it especially vigilant in the hottest months,” indicates the Ministry of Labor.
In the last year with available data, this increase in actions and requirements also crystallizes in the number of sanctions, which occur when the request for improvement is not satisfied: from June to September 2025 there were 292, above the 135 in 2022, the 169 in 2023 and the 223 in 2024. The economic transfer of these punishments are amounts that have also skyrocketed in recent years: from 706,420 euros in 2022 to one million euros in 2023, to 1.06 million in 2024 and to 1.56 million in 2025.
“The Inspection,” adds Trabajo, “carries out actions against heat throughout the year, with control actions that check that companies are prepared through the approval and implementation of protocols and other preventive measures.” The ministry emphasizes that preventive action prior to the arrival of heat is “fundamental”: “Companies must have adopted measures in advance.”
The Council of Ministers approved a set of labor-related measures to deal with the heat, among which the increased surveillance in sectors such as construction or the countryside, the most exposed, stands out. The Government announced an information campaign by the National Institute of Safety and Health at Work, the Inspection focus on complaints about heat stress, the reinforcement of surveillance and the sending of communications to companies highlighting the preventive measures they must adopt.
As reported by Trabajo shortly afterwards, they have been sent. “Working cannot cost one’s health or life. In the 21st century, no one should get sick or die in their workplace,” said the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, on June 15, recalling that in Spain in 2025 more than 700 people lost their lives in work accidents of various kinds.
only five of those incidents were officially related to the effect of high temperatures. There were also four other serious accidents and 250 minor accidents, in a panorama that the unions believe that this problem has a greater impact on workplace accidents than official statistics indicate and that it is common that, although heat is the trigger of an accident, the statistics link it to another cause.
There are studies that show a worsening of deaths at work due to high temperatures. This estimates a 42% increase in workplace deaths due to this cause globally in the period 2000-2020.
The labor regulations on high temperatures, updated in 2023 by the department led by Díaz, establishes that outdoor work can be paralyzed based on alerts from the State Meteorological Agency, in the event of orange or red warnings. The thresholds are not the same throughout Spain. Indoors, the temperature cannot exceed 25 degrees if it is physical work and 27 in offices. One of the spaces in which these limits are least respected are the classrooms of schools and institutes, in which the end of the course has been characterized.
The bill that seeks to further strengthen the law will soon arrive in Congress, with greater surveillance over small and medium-sized companies, which have the most work-related accidents. The initiative, agreed upon by Labor with the unions and without the employers, seeks to improve attention to heat stress, but there are very few chances of it succeeding. Without business support, it is foreseeable that the right-wing majority in Congress will reject the project, as has already happened with and as is expected with the extension of the death permit to ten days.
