Record temperatures for the month of April are expected in its southern part Spain, today and tomorrow.

“It is very likely that the peak of this episode will come on Thursday and Friday,” said the Spanish meteorological service, according to which “many temperature records” were broken on Wednesday.

“The very warm and dry air mass from northern Africa”, which is responsible for the heatwave, has caused since the beginning of the week a rise in temperatures to “levels corresponding to summer and particularly high for the season”, notes the Spanish meteorological service.

Today, temperatures are expected to reach 32 to 34 degrees Celsius in the southern part of the country, and even 37 degrees in the Guadalquivir river valley, the meteorological service said. At the beginning of the week he had talked about temperatures up to 40 degrees.

Yesterday the temperature exceeded 37 degrees Celsius at three meteorological stations in the provinces of Seville and Huelva in the region of Andalusia.

The heat wave is hitting Spain, while the spring in the country is unusually hot and dry, a catastrophic situation for agriculture, a pillar of the Spanish economy.

According to Coag, the main Spanish farmers’ union, 60% of arable land is in a state of “suffocation” due to the lack of rainfall.

To deal with the situation, the Spanish government asked the European Commission on Tuesday to activate the risk and crisis management mechanism of its Common Agricultural Policy in order to help its farmers and at the same time announced tax breaks.

Spain is being hit harder than any other country in Europe by climate change, with almost 75% of its land heading for desertification, according to the UN. Last year was the country’s hottest on record, with several heat waves hitting the country since May.