Yesterday wasn’t dramatic. No orange alerts. No headlines. Just one of those days where the air already feels tired before you are. My phone said 34°C in the shade. Which is basically Spain’s way of saying “don’t try to do three things in a row”.
I had to go into town. Bank. Photocopy. Pharmacy. The kind of list that looks small and then keeps extending itself.
About halfway through, the same question arrived, as it always does in summer:
Where can you just sit for ten minutes without having to buy something?
So I stopped pretending I wasn’t thinking about this stuff and turned it into a tiny test.
Two places. Both public. Both meant to be there for everyone.
The municipal library.
The main civic building, the town hall lobby.
Nothing clever. No edge cases. Just four basics:
Can you get in easily.
Is it actually cooler.
Is there water and a toilet.
Can you sit without feeling like you’re doing something wrong.
Stop 1: The library
Getting there
From the nearest bus stop it’s about six minutes. Two crossings. One of them with a green man that feels more like a suggestion than an instruction. The pavement is fine, but there’s a short stretch with no shade at all. You arrive already warm.
The door opens by itself. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Inside
Immediate relief. Not cold. Just… workable. The kind of temperature where you realise your shoulders have been up near your ears and you hadn’t noticed.
No dramatic blast of air, but the space is big enough not to feel stale.
Water and toilets
Toilets: yes. Clean. Clearly signposted.
Water: none that a normal person can see. There’s a vending machine. There’s a staff area. There might be a fountain somewhere. But for someone who’s just walked in off the street, the practical answer is no.
Sitting
Plenty of chairs. Some are “work” chairs, some are just chairs. Nobody seems to care which you use as long as you’re quiet.
This is the important bit: you are allowed to sit.
Nobody asked what I was doing. Nobody did the slow look. You can just be a person cooling down.
Friction
No sign outside saying this is a place you can come to cool off.
No visible water.
Opening hours are good, but not generous.
In real terms
If you know it’s here, and it’s open, it works.
But it only works for people who already know.
Stop 2: The civic building
Getting there
It’s actually closer to the bus stop, but the approach is worse. More open concrete. More reflected heat. The last hundred metres feel longer than they are.
Big doors. Security desk. The usual.
Inside
Slightly cooler than outside. But only slightly. You can tell the air conditioning is being rationed by someone with a spreadsheet.
It helps a bit. It does not solve the problem.
Water and toilets
Toilets: yes, but you have to ask. They are not obvious.
Water: nothing visible.
Sitting
This is where it falls down.
There are benches, but they are clearly “waiting for paperwork” benches. You sit and immediately feel like you should be holding a number or a folder.
After about five minutes a guard did the polite slow walk past. Not rude. Not confrontational. Just the universal question in shoe form: what are you here for?
I could have stayed. But I would have been staying with an excuse.
Friction
You don’t feel like you’re allowed to just sit.
No visible water.
Toilets are behind a social barrier.
The building works for processes, not for bodies.
In real terms
You can cool down here if you have business.
As a heat refuge, it’s accidental.
The boring, useful bit
The library already does most of the job.
It just doesn’t tell anyone.
On days like this, that’s the difference between “exists” and “works”.
One fix that would actually change things
Outside the library, at street level:
A simple sign:
“Cool space inside. Water. Toilets. You can sit here.”
Inside:
A basic public water dispenser.
That’s it.
No programme. No strategy document. No ribbon cutting.
Just finish the thing that already exists.
This is not a “heatwave” problem
Yesterday was normal.
This is just summer now.
Older people. Kids. Anyone doing admin on foot. Anyone waiting between buses.
If the only way to survive town is to keep buying drinks, then the town only really works for people with a card in their pocket and time to burn.
How you’d know it’s working
Not with a report.
You’d see:
People sitting who aren’t reading.
People coming in, cooling down, leaving.
Less loitering in banks and pharmacies just for the air.
The library quietly becoming part of the town’s survival map.
Next time
I want to try the same test in a health centre waiting area and one supermarket.
Not to attack them.
Just to keep mapping where the town already accidentally works, and where it quietly doesn’t.
Most days, the difference between an easy morning and a hard one is a chair, some shade, and being allowed to exist for ten minutes.