A ​decade on the Iberian ​frontline​ has shown me that Europe’s ​climate ​emergency​ is ​impossible to ​deny

What once felt exceptional now arrives with grim regularity​ all over the continent, and it will only get worse

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Spain has changed immeasurably since I arrived here 10 years ago to begin work as the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent.

Over that time, the push for Catalan independence has exploded, sputtered and faded out; the Covid pandemic has hit with unimaginable ferocity, before seeming to linger for a face-masked eternity; and Podemos and Ciudadanos – the two upstart parties that once seemed likely to alter the Spanish political landscape irrevocably – have risen and fallen.