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Spanish children will be taught how to respond to floods, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in a drive to help prepare them for the growing impact of the climate emergency.
The plan, unveiled on Thursday, comes after a summer of forest fires killed four people and less than a year after catastrophic floods claimed more than 220 lives in eastern parts of the country.
The aim, according to the education ministry, is to provide schools with a package that imparts “the necessary knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to deal with emergency situations in a safe and effective way”. As well as natural hazards and disasters, it will cover chemical, industrial and nuclear accidents and those related to the transport of dangerous materials.
More than 8 million children in 25,000 schools will be given the compulsory training, which will be delivered using videos, infographics and other media. Infant and primary school pupils will be given a minimum of two hours of lessons, while older children will receive at least four hours. Spain’s self-governing regions will be able to tailor the training to the different risks they face.
“Infant school children aged three, four and five, will learn to recognise an alarm and how to spot the first signs of danger, as well as basic safety principles,” the ministry said in a statement. “Older children will learn to seek out high ground in a flood and to shelter under a desk if the earth starts to shake.”
It said students would also be taught about “the differences between information and disinformation in emergency situations”.
Speaking at the scheme’s launch at a school in the east-central city of Cuenca, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the aim was to prepare children and young people to respond as well as possible to situations “that are clearly being made worse by the climate emergency”.
The lessons, which will begin this school year, are one of the measures laid out in a 10-point plan to protect a country on the frontlines of climate change.
“If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener,” Sánchez said on 1 September.
The prime minister is calling on Spain’s political class and public to unite for what he calls a “great state pact” to tackle the climate crisis.
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“Let’s leave ideological issues to one side and let’s listen to reason, science and common sense,” he said on Thursday, adding that there was a pressing need for “commonsense policies to deal with emergencies and the fight against climate change”.
But his calls have been dismissed by the opposition conservative People’s party, which has accused Sánchez and his government of failing to protect Spaniards and their property from the wildfires.
“State pacts don’t put out the flames, nor do they restore what’s been lost,” a PP spokesperson said last month.
