Spain's Miserable Winter Weather Could Finally Be Coming to an End, Says UN

The End of a Difficult Winter

If it feels like Spain has had an unusually rough winter, that is because it has. Since January 2026, much of the country has been battered by rapid successive storms, erratic temperature swings, and the kind of relentlessly unsettled weather that makes it hard to plan anything outdoors. Warm days have given way to sudden cold snaps, and prolonged spells of settled sunshine have been notable by their absence.

Now, there is some welcome news from the United Nations. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has confirmed that the climate phenomenon largely responsible for the chaos — La Niña — is weakening, and that a shift to more settled conditions could be on the way.

What Is La Niña and Why Does It Affect Spain?

La Niña is a recurring climate pattern characterised by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. It is part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, and its effects ripple outward from the Pacific to influence weather patterns around the globe — including in Europe and Spain.

During a La Niña phase, the Atlantic weather systems that cross into Europe tend to be more active and less predictable. For Spain, this typically translates into:

• More frequent and intense storms arriving from the Atlantic
• Greater variability between warm and cold days
• Higher rainfall in some regions and unusual drought conditions in others
• Disrupted seasonal patterns — winters that feel more like an extended, stormy autumn

The 2025–26 La Niña has been a notable one, and its fingerprints have been clearly visible in the weather Spain has experienced since the turn of the year.

What the WMO Is Now Saying

The WMO's latest assessment brings cautious optimism. The organisation confirmed that La Niña is now in a weakening phase, and put the probability of a transition to neutral conditions as follows:

Period	Probability of Transition to Neutral Phase
March – May 2026	60%
April – June 2026	70%

In plain terms: there is a seven in ten chance that the La Niña influence on global and European weather will have faded by early summer. A neutral ENSO phase — neither La Niña nor El Niño — generally brings more predictable, seasonally typical conditions, which for Spain means the return of more reliable spring sunshine and warmth.

Could El Niño Arrive This Summer?

Beyond the transition to neutral, the WMO also flagged the possibility of the opposite phenomenon — El Niño — arriving later in the year. The organisation puts a 40% chance of El Niño developing between May and July 2026.

El Niño brings warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific and tends to have the opposite effect on European weather to La Niña — typically associated with warmer, drier conditions across parts of southern Europe, including Spain. For a country that already grapples with drought and water scarcity, a strong El Niño event in summer would bring its own set of challenges, particularly for agriculture and water reserves.

However, with only a 40% probability at this stage, an El Niño summer remains a possibility rather than a certainty, and the WMO will issue updated assessments as the season progresses.

What This Means for Spring in Spain

The practical takeaway for people living in or visiting Spain is straightforward: the worst of the winter's weather disruption is likely behind us. As La Niña weakens over the coming weeks, conditions should gradually become more settled — bringing the kind of mild, sunny spring weather that Spain is famous for.

This aligns with the seasonal pattern expected for late March and April, when temperatures across southern Spain typically climb into the high teens and low twenties and sunshine hours begin to increase significantly. The Mediterranean coast, Andalusia, and the islands are usually the quickest to feel the benefits of improving conditions.

That said, the WMO is clear that this is a probabilistic forecast rather than a guarantee. Weather systems can still produce unsettled spells even during a neutral ENSO phase, and the transition may not be instantaneous or uniform across all of Spain's diverse regions.

The Bigger Picture: Climate Change Doesn't Stop

The WMO was careful to include an important caveat alongside its La Niña outlook. The weakening of La Niña does not mean an end to weather extremes in Spain or elsewhere. The organisation emphasised that the natural ENSO cycle operates alongside — and is increasingly interacting with — human-driven climate change.

Rising global temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events, and shifting precipitation patterns are long-term trends that continue regardless of whether the world is in a La Niña, neutral, or El Niño phase. Spain has already experienced some of its hottest summers and most intense flood events on record in recent years, and that underlying trend is not reversed by a seasonal shift in Pacific sea temperatures.

For Spain specifically, the combination of climate change and ENSO variability means that weather patterns are likely to remain less predictable and more extreme than historical averages — even in years when the ENSO signal itself is relatively benign.

A Welcome Change — With Caveats

For anyone who has endured the storms, grey skies, and weather whiplash of the 2025–26 winter in Spain, the prospect of La Niña fading is genuinely welcome news. Spring — when it arrives properly — is one of the best times of year in Spain: warm without the summer heat, green from the winter rains, and rich with wildflowers, outdoor festivals, and the famous light that makes the country so photogenic.

The WMO's assessment suggests that spring 2026 should deliver more of what Spain does best, weather-wise — though as always with climate forecasting, the message is one of improving probabilities rather than certainties.

Check the latest forecasts from AEMET (Spain's State Meteorological Agency, aemet.es) for the most up-to-date regional outlooks as the season develops.

This article is based on WMO reporting from March 2026. Weather forecasts are probabilistic and subject to change. Always check current forecasts for travel or planning purposes.