Inside Barcelona’s most sweltering neighbourhood: El Raval

Barcelona, Spain – The sky glows with the pink, orange and blue hues that commonly appear when the sun slips below the horizon – but the heat and humidity remain suffocating.A group of Pakistani women take refuge from the scorching heat at the water’s edge on Barcelona’s beach in colourful, breezy cotton clothing, some letting the water wash over them as they lie on the wet sand. Others are dancing in the shallows to music from home blasting from a speaker, or cooling off under showers on the beach.The Spanish city broke its heat record on July 8 , with temperatures reaching 40.7C (105F) during the European heatwave and the wider Barcelona province has recorded an estimated 205 heat-related deaths since the start of the month.A study last year published by Nature Medicine projected that, in a worst-case scenario, the city could see more than 246,000 heat-attributable deaths between 2015 and 2099 – more than any other European city, mostly because of its Mediterranean location and urban density. Then there is the heat-island effect, in which densely built-up areas, pollution, asphalt and a lack of green spaces trap heat and drive temperatures up.Walking through one of the narrow str...