Technical article

Summer Heat and Air Conditioning in Spain: What the Official Pages Say

What does it cost to keep a home cool, and how hot does it really get?

By Neil Solomon · 5 min read

Picture a couple named Paul and Maria. Both are 66. They love the idea of a flat in southern Spain. Then Paul reads that summer 2025 was the hottest on record. He asks a plain question. What does it cost to keep a home cool, and how hot does it really get?

I started with the Spanish weather agency, AEMET. Then I went looking for the cost of cooling. The heat numbers are firm. The cooling cost is not, and I explain why.

How hot was summer 2025

AEMET published its summer summary on 16 September 2025. It covers 1 June to 31 August.

AEMET also reported that Madrid/Getafe and Castellón had their warmest night on record for the lowest temperature of the day.

AEMET defines a heat wave as an episode of "al menos tres días consecutivos" (at least three days in a row) in which at least 10% of the stations it uses record maximums above the 95th percentile of their July and August series for 1971-2000. So a "heat wave" is a measured event, not a feeling.

What households paid for electricity

Air conditioners run on electricity, so the household bill matters. The competition authority, the CNMC, published a household panel on 5 December 2024. For the second quarter of 2024 (April to June) it says: "Los hogares españoles gastaron 47,8 euros al mes en electricidad" (Spanish households spent EUR 47.80 a month on electricity), up 10.5% on a year earlier. Consumption rose 5.1%. The data leave out homes with a dual electricity-and-gas bill and homes with contracted power above 10 kW.

That is a spring quarter, not the hottest months. It is also an average for all homes. A couple running cooling every afternoon in July could see a different figure. No official number for that was found.

The European statistics office, Eurostat, gave an EU average household electricity price of EUR 0.2896 per kWh for the second half of 2025, for homes using between 2,500 and 5,000 kWh a year. For Spain, the same Eurostat table (dataset nrg_pc_204, same band, all taxes and levies included, updated 9 October 2026) shows EUR 0.2669 per kWh for the second half of 2025 and EUR 0.2612 for the first half. For the EU average the same table shows EUR 0.2896 and EUR 0.2879. The first half of 2026 is also in the table for Spain: EUR 0.2509 per kWh (read through the Eurostat data service on 11 October 2026).

What the health ministry says about heat at home

Spain's health ministry runs a national heat plan. Its 2026 plan is normally active from 16 May to 30 September. It lists people over 65 as at higher risk, and says deaths are concentrated among those over 75. It also names people who live alone and people on low incomes who cannot keep their homes cool enough. For staying cool it suggests time in "lugares frescos, a la sombra o climatizados" (cool, shaded or air-conditioned places).

How many homes have air conditioning, and my arithmetic on a unit

The National Statistics Institute's household and environment survey for 2008 found air conditioning in 35.5% of Spanish homes, with the highest share in the hot regions (57.4% in Andalusia) and a much lower share in towns under 10,000 people. That is the latest official share I could read, and it is eighteen years old, so treat it as a floor. The IDAE housing energy study counts air-conditioning units rather than homes, which does not give a share.

For the cost, here is my arithmetic with an assumed unit. A split unit that draws 1 kW when it runs, running six hours a day for 30 days, uses 180 kWh. At EUR 0.2509 per kWh that is about EUR 45 a month. Run it twelve hours a day and it is about EUR 90. The 1 kW draw is my assumption, not a published figure, and a larger or older unit uses more.

What this article leaves for another day

• The kilowatt-hours a typical Spanish home uses for cooling. The statistics office does not publish it as a separate line.
• A published cost per summer month. The figure above is arithmetic, and it depends on the unit, the flat and the hours.

If you want a real number, you could ask a landlord for last July's electricity bill for the exact flat. That is a better guide than any national average.