Spanish teacher with rare disorder battles summers unable to sweat

Alberto Gómez, a 36-year-old physics and chemistry teacher in Arroyomolinos near Madrid, approaches summer the way most people approach a natural disaster. He has ichthyosis, a rare genetic skin disorder that strips away his body's ability to sweat—the mechanism that keeps nearly everyone else alive when temperatures climb. For him, a hot day is not merely uncomfortable. It is a threat that requires constant calculation, constant vigilance, the kind of low-grade fear that settles in around May and doesn't lift until September.

Ichthyosis affects roughly 300 people across Spain. The condition is inherited, lifelong, and incurable. It leaves skin excessively dry, rough, and red, causing it to peel and crack. But the visible symptoms, while painful and demanding—patients spend hours daily applying moisturizing creams—are not the most dangerous part. The real threat is invisible: many patients with ichthyosis produce little to no sweat at all. Sweat is how the human body releases heat. Without it, the body cannot cool itself. The internal temperature climbs. The cells begin to break down. Death becomes possible.

Dermatologist Angela Hernandez, an ichthyosis specialist in Spain, describes what happens when the body cannot shed heat: it overheats to the point of collapse. All the cells are destroyed. She speaks of it clinically, but the implication is stark. For people like Gómez, summer is a season where their own physiology becomes an enemy.

Gómez has adapted. He carries a UV-blocking umbrella everywhere—not a cap, which would trap heat around his head, but an umbrella that allows air to circulate. He exercises only in air-conditioned gyms. Even then, after a few minutes of activity, small water-filled bumps appear on his skin, a sign that his body is attempting something it cannot quite accomplish. He told AFP that his fear is straightforward: suffering a heatstroke and being unable to recover from it. "When summer comes, we have a series of warning signs telling us something could happen if we don't start regulating our temperature," he said.

For teenagers with the condition, the restrictions are even more severe. Jaime García, who heads the Spanish Ichthyosis Association, has a 17-year-old son named Álvaro who also has ichthyosis. During Álvaro's first summer, García watched his son's face turn deep red and noticed something that struck him: when Álvaro cried, it looked as though sweat was pouring out through his tears, as though his body was desperately trying to do what it could not do naturally. When Álvaro started school, he was seated near a fan beginning in April. By June, the afternoon heat became unbearable, and he stopped attending classes in the afternoons. A swimming pool—a normal teenage activity—requires careful planning. Álvaro can spend only a few minutes in the water before he must shower, dry off, and apply moisturizing cream in private. Now a teenager, he never leaves home without a tube of cream in his pocket, a small but constant physical reminder that for people with ichthyosis, surviving summer is not something that happens by accident.

Spain's summers are growing hotter and more prolonged. Climate patterns are shifting. For the vast majority of the population, this means discomfort, higher electricity bills, occasional warnings to stay hydrated. For people like Gómez and Álvaro, it means something closer to a countdown. Their lives have already been reshaped by a condition they did not choose and cannot escape. Now the world around them is becoming more hostile to their survival.