Madrid (AFP) – Power went out across all of Spain and Portugal on Monday, cutting cellphone and internet networks, halting trains, and trapping people in elevators, officials said. Spain’s government was scrambling to identify the origin of the huge outage, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez going to the headquarters of the state electricity network operator to be briefed. The operator, Red Electrica, stated that it would likely take six to 10 hours to restore power in the country and urged people not to speculate on the cause of the outage.
Images posted on social media showed metro stations plunged into darkness, with trains halted, and people in offices and hallways using the light from their phones to see. The national road authority DGT told motorists to stop driving, as stop lights were out, forcing vehicles to slow to avoid collisions, while police officers directed traffic at intersections. AFP journalists in Madrid and Barcelona witnessed people coming out into the streets, holding their smartphones up to try to connect to a network. Reports from Spanish media indicated that people were also trapped in lifts.
The internet activity monitoring site Netblocks informed AFP that the blackout caused a “loss of much of the country’s digital infrastructure.” It reported that web connections plunged to just 17 percent of normal usage.
Portugal’s REN operator stated in a statement to AFP that all of the Iberian Peninsula was affected by the blackout, adding that the outage occurred around midday. There was also a brief blackout in southwest France, according to that country’s electricity operator, although power had since been restored. “An electrical incident is currently affecting Spain and Portugal, the cause of which remains to be determined,” France’s high-voltage grid operator RTE said. The European Commission was in contact with Spain and Portugal “to understand the underlying cause” of the outage, a spokesperson said.
Spain’s railway operator Adif reported that the power cut halted trains across the entire country. Airports operator Aena acknowledged there were flight delays but noted that the country’s airports were still operational thanks to “contingency electricity systems.” Spain’s Red Electrica indicated that it had started to restore power in the north and south of the country, but the problem was not yet fully resolved. “We are continuing to work to bring back power,” it said.
Spain’s El Pais newspaper posted photos on its website of stopped metro trains in Madrid, police directing traffic, and its own reporters working in a darkened office by torchlight. The publication also reported that hospitals’ core departments were able to keep functioning due to backup generators, even if some other units were left without power.
Massive blackouts have affected other countries around the world in recent years. Huge outages struck Tunisia in September 2023, Sri Lanka in August 2020, and Argentina and Uruguay in June 2019. Additionally, India experienced a vast blackout in July 2012. In Europe, November 2006 saw 10 million people left without power for an hour across France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain, caused by a failure in Germany’s grid.
© 2024 AFP
