Portugal hit 44°C. The shade missing from your street has someone responsible for it.

TL;DR

• In July 2026, Portugal endured a 8-to-10-day heatwave with highs up to 44°C and 12 districts under red alert, according to IPMA. Across Europe, estimates already pointed to more than 1,300 heat-related deaths by the end of June.
• Heat does not fall equally across every part of a city. Asphalt, concrete, and the absence of trees create urban heat islands: neighbourhoods several degrees hotter than tree-lined suburbs. Lisbon is identified as the 7th most heat-exposed city in Europe, out of more than a hundred studied.
• The science is clear on the cheapest solution: urban trees mitigate nearly half of the heat-island effect. Yet 84% of buildings across 25 analysed European cities lack sufficient tree canopy nearby to cool them effectively.
• And here is the point that rarely gets made: trees, green spaces, irrigation, shade, and climate shelters are, to a large extent, the responsibility of the local council. The new Pro Nat.Urbe programme mobilises 90 million euros and launches in 2026 across five municipalities.
• Citizens do not read temperature maps. They feel the heat on their street. What is missing is a place — public, anonymous, and traceable — to record where shade, trees, or greenery are absent. That is exactly what Queixate is for.

The summer that is no longer just summer

There was a time when a heatwave was an episode. Today it is a season within a season. In July 2026, IPMA warned of a hot, dry period lasting 8 to 10 days, with highs between 35°C and 41°C across most of the country and reaching 44°C in the Tagus Valley and Alentejo. As many as 12 districts were placed under red alert — the highest level — and the country was on a state of alert.

This is not a scheduling inconvenience. It is a public health issue. Health authorities warned of a foreseeable rise in mortality, and at the European scale estimates already pointed to more than 1,300 heat-related deaths by the end of June. Extreme heat kills above all the most vulnerable — the elderly, the chronically ill, infants — and it kills in silence, at home, without headlines.

Heat has a postcode

Here is what street thermometers reveal that the national bulletin conceals: heat is not uniform within the same city. A concrete square in full sun can be several degrees hotter than a garden two streets away. This is the so-called urban heat-island effect — asphalt and concrete absorb heat during the day and release it at night, stealing the relief of the so-called tropical nights.

This is not a geographical inevitability. It is, to a large extent, a planning choice: how much was paved, how much was planted, how much shade was left standing. Lisbon appears in European studies as the 7th most heat-exposed city on the continent, out of more than a hundred analysed. And the difference between a liveable street and a scorching one is measured, more often than not, in trees.

The cheapest solution is right in front of us

Science has now put numbers on the age-old intuition — that it is better to stand in the shade of a tree. A study published in Nature Communications found that urban trees mitigate nearly half of the heat-island effect; without them, temperatures in urban areas could be up to twice as high. Neighbourhoods with mature trees can be between 4 and 10°C cooler than equivalent areas dominated by asphalt.

The problem is that shade is scarce where it is needed most. An analysis conducted by RMIT researchers covering around 5.5 million buildings across 25 European cities — including Portugal — found that 84% of buildings lack sufficient tree canopy around them (less than 30% coverage within a 60-metre radius) to cool effectively during a heatwave. In other words: the majority of Europeans live and work on streets where the tree that would save them from the heat simply is not there.

Planting — and above all keeping alive — a street tree is not charming gardening. It is public-health infrastructure, as serious as a pavement or a street lamp.

Who is responsible for the tree, the garden, and the shade?

Here is the part that rarely enters the conversation about heat: a large part of the response is municipal. It is the local council that plants and waters street trees, that decides whether a square gets shade or stays bare, that maintains (or lets dry out) green spaces, and that opens — or does not open — climate shelters on the hottest days. When a tree is felled and not replaced, when a neighbourhood garden goes the whole summer without irrigation, when a school has not a single shaded spot in its playground, there is always a decision — or an omission — with an owner.

And there is finally a national plan to act. The Pro Nat.Urbe programme — Action Programme for Urban Nature Resilience and Restoration — mobilises 90 million euros through to 2030 to cool cities with nature-based solutions, with the target of intervening in around one thousand hectares of urban space by 2035. The first phase, worth 10 million euros from the Environmental Fund, launches in 2026 with pilot projects in Vila Real, Leiria, São João da Madeira, Beja, and Évora, including climate-comfort networks: shelters with shade, water points, and vegetation, designed above all for those most vulnerable to heat — the elderly and children.

This is an important step — and it is also a test. Five municipalities are starting now; the other two hundred or so are watching. And even in those moving forward, the gap between an announcement and a cooler street is bridged by execution, maintenance, and scrutiny year after year.

What you can ask — and record — on your street

You do not need to be a urban planner to know what to notice when you step outside on a 40°C day. Three concrete questions for your local council:

1. Are the street trees alive and being watered? A tree that is planted and then abandoned until it dries out is public money evaporating — and one less patch of shade the following summer.
2. Are the existing green spaces and shaded areas being maintained? Neighbourhood gardens, school playgrounds, squares, and bus stops: wherever shade is missing, protection is missing too.
3. Are there accessible climate shelters and water points on days of extreme heat? And are they open, signposted, and functioning when the thermometer surges?

What is not recorded is not counted. And what is not counted is easy to postpone until next summer.

Record the heat on your street

Extreme heat is meteorology — you cannot send it away with a complaint. But the city that amplifies or softens it is built from local decisions: where to plant, what to water, which shade to maintain, which shelter to open. Those decisions have owners, and citizens have the right to name them — without bureaucracy and without fear.

On Queixate you can file a complaint about a tree that dried up, an abandoned garden, a street without a single patch of shade, or a climate shelter that should exist and does not. It is free, anonymous, and directed to the right council. One complaint is an isolated case. Many complaints, in the same place, are a map — the map of the heat that the city can, and must, reduce.

File your complaint at queixate.pt. Because the shade missing from your street also has someone responsible for it.