Everyday climate change as an embodied, intersectional, and situated experience: Insights from Catalonia

Climate change is not a distant risk but an everyday lived experience. This article examines climate change in Catalonia, Spain by focusing on daily routines, relationships, and emotions. In doing so, it moves beyond predominantly abstract, technical, and quantitative approaches to the climate crisis by foregrounding everyday experiences through three mutually constitutive dimensions: embodiment, intersectionality, and situatedness. Methodologically, the study combines Climate Relief Maps, an innovative tool for examining lived experiences of climate change, with focus group discussions. The analysis draws on data from 87 individual participants and five focus groups in diverse areas in Catalonia. Four themes emerge as central: physical and mental distress; loss of sense of place; reconfigured social and community spaces and practices; and tensions between responsibility and agency. Participants also identify spaces of comfort where they find support, motivation, and possibilities for action. By bringing together embodiment, intersectionality, and spatial situatedness, this article demonstrates how everyday climate change is embodied unequally in a context-specific manner. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for the complexity of lived realities of climate change for developing more grounded and socially just approaches to climate research and policy.