The following text is an excerpt from the book ‘Heat. How the climate crisis affects us, by Miguel Ángel Criado (Debate) recently published. The work collects the different climatic fluctuations in the history of Spain until reaching the present. Towards the future, it anticipates the scenarios that await several of the elements that define this country, from its fauna to tourism, through agriculture, nature’s revenge or the heat islands of the cities.
In 1569, Francisco Franco (another Franco, the one from Ferrol was not as long-lived) published a book in Seville about the benefits of snow. In its Tractate of the nieue and the vso della, who was doctor to King John III of Portugal, recounts the possible medicinal uses of the flakes, always used sparingly. In the first pages of the treatise by the doctor of Xàtiva one can read, once converted into current Spanish:
“Great things are what Mr. Don Francisco de Castilla has done and innovated for the better governance of this great machine of Seville and having ordered how to bring snow can be counted among them, because snow is necessary for many diseases, and for all who are healthy and well disposed to cool their ordinary drink.”
The little book, with only 30 pages of continuous text, is a gem. Beyond the medicinal use of snow, he also recommends its use to cool the water in the city, as Franco himself writes: “So if in any part of Spain there is a need for this gift, it is Seville, since it will be there since May.” “The Sun is hot and scorching, you can’t even walk through the streets.” The doctor still has room to raise a kind of philosophical-historical debate on the use of snow in which everyone from Greek philosophers such as Hippocrates to the Persian Avicenna, including the Greco-Roman Galen, intervene. For one it is a great tool of medicine, for others, a kind of degeneration of natural things.
Before Franco’s work, other works had already been written, some contrary to the use of snow. It is the case of Medieval art release, by professor at the University of Alcalá and court doctor Cristóbal de la Vega, who considers drinking cold drinks, almost always water and wine, as a vice. For Luis de Toro, a disciple of De la Vega, the consumption of snow is worse, practically gluttony. Already in the 17th century, in his Light to the living and lesson to the dead, the bishop of Osma, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, recounts a case of a lost soul. In it he says that a deceased person appeared to him asking for intercession before the Almighty, since he was purging his guilt, that is, the sin of playing ball and drinking cold. Cooling water with snow was a sin. In the same Seville where Franco published his book, just two years later, his eternal rival, the humanist doctor Nicolás Monardes, presented the Treaty of snow and cold drinking.
That editorial boom on the subject responded to a trend, that of consuming it or using it to cool water, but also to make soft drinks or for more serious purposes, such as treating different ailments. Like almost all fashions, it started among the nobility and trickled down into society. But for a trend like this, whose basis is snow, to spread to Madrid and other towns that rarely saw snow, such as Seville, Malaga, Alicante or Valencia, a lot of snow is needed and when it is most needed it is usually when it is least needed. there is, in summer. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, a new sector, a new economic activity, developed throughout the peninsula, with an entire commercial and transportation network, with wells, snowfields and snow houses at not too high altitudes from which blocks of snow were sent. ice and snow to the cities. Everything was possible because, since 1300 in Europe and since 1400 in Spain, they lived in the middle of the Little Ice Age (PEH).
The PEH is the last cold climatic period prior to the current situation. According to the different proxies used, the cooling occurred between 1300 and 1850, with its local variations. As was the case with the Medieval Climate Optimum, IPCC reports maintain that it was a regional event, which only affected the northern hemisphere, especially Europe. On a macro scale, the origin of the transition from warm to cold seems to have been in solar activity. During those centuries, the succession of sunspots (which are like heaters turned to maximum at specific times) was reduced, with a series of minima, such as Maunder, in which they almost disappeared from the surface of the Sun. The reduction of the Radiation would profoundly affect the Atlantic climate system. The polar ice advanced until it reached the south of Greenland (in the 15th century the Vikings had to abandon the island they had colonized 500 years before, taking advantage of the medieval optimum) and the alpine glaciers, including the Iberian ones, recovered. The cold took over Europe, with winters much longer than the current ones and short, humid summers. In Spain, however, the summer witnessed profound aridity.
“…mortals had no memory of such excess cold as this year; “Many rivers froze so close to the sea that the ice formed a margin.”
Vicente Bacallar de Sanna, Marquis of San Felipe and participant in the War of Succession (1701-1714) to the Crown of Spain
As the professor of Modern History at the University of Alicante, Armando Alberola Roma, recalls in his book Climatic Changes: the Little Ice Age in Spain, the PEH does not have a linear development and is marked by phases or pulsations in which it still did colder than usual. Alberola collects the reflections of Vicente Bacallar de Sanna, Marquis of San Felipe and participant in the War of Succession (1701-1714) to the Crown of Spain by the Bourbon side when in his Comments on the Spanish War says:
“…mortals had no memory of such excess cold as this year; Many rivers so close to the sea froze that the ice formed a margin; the trees dried up because of its intensity […]. She did not run liquid water, not even the one she carried in her hands to drink. […]. The sentinels died in the sentries and human industry found almost no protection against such irregular inclemency, the crops made no progress, and hunger was introduced in the coldest countries.
The Little Ice Age was the coldest period of the entire Holocene, if we leave aside the initial centuries in which the northward retreating ice still covered much of the Atlantic and Europe. Living conditions in Spain were very harsh during the 17th and 18th centuries, and only the flight to the Indies served as an escape valve for a system, that of the Old Regime, which in addition to its own problems and contradictions had to deal with the climate adversity. In Spain, as in all of Europe, the outbreaks of the Black Death were repeated two, three and even four times, which between the 14th and 15th centuries killed more millions of people than any other pandemic in human history. Only with the arrival of the 19th century did the climate begin to give a truce, with an increase in the average temperature of almost 1° compared to the previous situation.
Meanwhile, somewhat further north, in England, the greatest human revolution since the Neolithic, the industrial one, began. It was started by a Scot, James Watt, who, seeking to improve an earlier machine, created the steam engine. With it came mechanized looms, the railroad, factories, foundries. In short, an era of metal fueled by coal, black rocks generated millions of years before that had been declared a wonderful fuel. But when burned, alas, it released a gas, carbon dioxide (CO₂), which almost two centuries later was proven to be changing the climate again. This time warming the entire planet, not just England or Europe, and doing so at levels never equaled in the history of humanity.
Heat
Title: Heat. How the climate crisis affects us
Author: Miguel Ángel Criado
On sale: June 6
Price: €21.75
Pages: 318 pages
Editorial: Debate
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