After his death, his family found searches on his computer for the symptoms of heatstroke and how to prevent it. One year later Spain passed a law to protect those who work outdoors during heatwaves, ensuring employers adapt or reduce working times when the national weather service issues an orange or red heat alert.

Across Europe 130 million workers are exposed to dangerous heat on the job, with 230 deaths and 277,000 injuries at work each year. There is currently no EU-wide law setting a maximum temperature for outdoor work. Right now this is left to each individual country to decide.

European trade unions, representing 15 million workers, have drafted a proposal for an EU law to guarantee workers' rights across the bloc, The Guardian reported.

The document asks for enforceable thermal limits in the workplace and suggests using the wet bulb scale, which measures the human body’s ability to cool down.

Even the existing EU rules are far from being comprehensive. While gathering feedback on the upcoming Quality Jobs Act, the European Commission admitted that the current legal framework “explicitly excludes workers” in fields, woods and other agricultural areas.

Finnish Green MEP Maria Ohisalo, rapporteur on extreme temperatures at work, is backing the draft, arguing that only binding rules can protect workers across borders. For now, ad hoc solutions are filling the gaps.

The death of another street cleaner in Barcelona in 2025 that made it clear to the local government that heatwaves pose a significant threat to outside workers. In July, the town handed out almost 1,400 wristbands to the cleaning brigades. The gadgets send an alert when their body temperature gets too high.