The weather alerts are in place across eight regions for cold temperatures with Teruel in Aragon the only province with a red warning. 

Spain’s meteorological agency initially predicted that temperatures would begin to rise from Thursday but revised the forecast and extended the duration of the cold snap from four days to ten, making it the longest lasting period of prolonged freezing temperatures for twenty years.

“The amount of snow on the ground is such that it is preventing the temperatures from rising as was expected,” Rubén del Campo spokesman from the weather agency explained on Thursday.

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He explained that a change  was not expected until next Wednesday when an Atlantic front arrives bringing warmer temperatures and a light wind.

The freezing temperatures have complicated clean up operations in the wake of the Storm Filomena which dumped the heaviest snowfall across the country in half a century.

In Madrid, schools remain closed and many roads are still not cleared as snow turned into packed ice.

The early morning of Tuesday January 12 was “coldest since 1963” in the Community of Madrid and on Wednesday the coldest ever temperature was recorded in Madrid when a new low of  -12ºC was registered in Getafe.

READ MORE: 

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