Spanish schools to teach pupils how to cope with climate crisis disasters

Children as young as three will have lessons on wildfires and flooding under 10-point emergency response plan

Spanish children will be taught how to respond to floods, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a drive to help prepare them for the growing impact of the climate emergency.

The plan was unveiled on Thursday after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after catastrophic floods claimed more than 220 lives in eastern parts of the country.

The aim, according to the education ministry, is to provide schools with a package that imparts “the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to deal with emergency situations in a safe and effective way”. As well as natural hazards and disasters, it will cover chemical, industrial and nuclear accidents and those related to the transport of dangerous materials.

More than 8 million children in 25,000 schools will be given the compulsory training, which will be delivered using videos, infographics and other media. Infant and primary school pupils will be given a minimum of two hours of lessons, while older children will receive at least four hours. Spain’s self-governing regions will be able to tailor the training to the different risks they face.

“Infant school children aged three, four and five, will learn to recognise an alarm and how to spot the first signs of danger, as well as basic safety principles,” the ministry said in a statement. “Older children will learn to seek out high ground in a flood and to shelter under a desk if the earth starts to shake.”

It said students would also be taught about “the differences between information and disinformation in emergency situations”.

Speaking at the scheme’s launch at a school in the east-central city of Cuenca, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the aim was to prepare children and young people to respond as well as possible to situations “that are clearly being made worse by the climate emergency”.

The ​lessons, which will begin this school year, are one of the measures laid out in a 10-point plan to protect a country on the frontlines of climate change.

“If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener,” Sánchez said on 1 September.

The prime minister is calling on Spain’s political class and public to unite for what he calls a “great state pact” to tackle the climate crisis.

Cover photo:  The aftermath of flooding in Sedavi, a district of Valencia in Spain. More than 220 people were killed by massive floods in October 2024. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters