Spain will make lessons on floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions compulsory for children as young as three in what the government says is an urgent step to prepare the next generation for the effects of the climate emergency.
The education ministry unveiled the plan on Thursday, less than a year after catastrophic floods killed more than 220 people in eastern Spain and only weeks after summer wildfires left four dead.
More than eight million children in 25,000 schools will be given training under a 10-point emergency response programme that also covers chemical, industrial and nuclear accidents, as well as incidents involving the transport of hazardous materials.
According to the ministry, the aim is to equip pupils with “the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to deal with emergency situations in a safe and effective way”. Infant and primary school children will receive at least two hours of classes while older students will be taught for at least four hours, using videos, infographics and other material.
For the youngest age group, lessons will focus on recognising alarms, spotting early signs of danger and learning basic safety principles. Older children will be taught to seek high ground during a flood or take cover under a desk during an earthquake. All students will also be given guidance on how to distinguish between reliable information and disinformation during emergencies.
Launching the scheme at a school in Cuenca, prime minister Pedro Sanchez said the climate crisis meant young people needed to be better prepared than any previous generation. “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,” he said.
Mr Sanchez called on all political parties to unite behind a “great state pact” to confront the crisis. “Let’s leave ideological issues to one side and let’s listen to reason, science and common sense,” he said.
The new classes will begin this academic year. Spain’s devolved regions will be able to tailor the material to their local risks, whether it’s wildfires in the Mediterranean forests, flooding along the eastern seaboard or seismic activity in the Canary Islands.
The announcement comes as Spain – one of the European countries most exposed to the impacts of the climate crisis – faces intensifying extreme weather. The Mediterranean basin is warming around 20 per cent faster than the global average, leaving Spain especially exposed to extreme heat, droughts and flooding.
Successive summers of heatwaves and wildfires have devastated farmland and forced mass evacuations in the country while torrential autumn rains have caused deadly flooding.
The new plan has drawn criticism from the conservative opposition, which has accused the Sanchez government of failing to do enough to prevent disasters in the first place.
“State pacts don’t put out the flames, nor do they restore what’s been lost,” a spokesperson for the People’s party said.
Analysts reviewing the 2024 Valencia floods said Spain’s early warning systems were too slow and coordination between local and national agencies was inadequate.
Spain is not the first country to integrate disaster preparedness into education but the scale of the initiative is unprecedented in Europe.
Spanish officials say their scheme draws on models like Japan’s which involve schoolchildren regularly doing earthquake and tsunami drills and expands on regional initiatives like Valencia’s civil protection classes launched in 2018.
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