A changing climate and invasion of stronger types of African mosquitoes means that malaria could return to Spain within the next decade, says the National Health Ministry, which is evaluating the risk of the plague carrying mosquito returning for good to Spain.
Spain sees a couple of hundred malaria cases a year, but almost all of them are contracted abroad and break out upon the tourists return to Spain.
Malaria was officially eradicated in Spain in 1964, but in 2010 the disease returned, with the first case of malaria contracted from a Spanish mosquito being registered in Murcia, but this was an isolated case with no greater risk to the population.
Or at least, nobody else caught it.
Greece in 2011 suffered a small epidemic, with 64 people becoming infected with malaria in one summer, but this was due to a lack of proper control and reaction to the outbreak.
Malaria is an infectious disease which is communicable to the central authority when detected, and local insect control companies are used to detecting and eradicating anopheles mosquitoes (the ones that carry the parasite that causes malaria).
Currently, even when one blows in from Africa, it generally dies over the winter, or is eradicated by plague companies.
But the Health Ministry, together with the National Federation of Plague and Control companies, says that the anopheles mosquito could return to Spain within the next decade as climate control causes the Med coast to warm up, allowing them to thrive all year round.
Just something else to worry about….