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LAST UPDATE | 29 Apr
SPAIN’S TOP CRIMINAL court said it is investigating whether the huge blackout that paralysed the Iberian Peninsula was “an act of computer sabotage on critical infrastructure”.
Although the causes are unknown, “cyberterrorism is among” the potential explanations, while the “critical situation” generated for the population meant an investigation was necessary, the Audiencia Nacional said in a statement.
The blackout resulted in the stranding of passengers in trains and hundreds of elevators while millions saw phone and internet coverage die.
Electricity had been restored to more than 90% of mainland Spain early today, the REE power operator said.
Barely a corner of the peninsula, which has a joint population of almost 60 million people, escaped the blackout. But no firm cause for the shutdown has yet emerged, though wild rumours spread on messaging networks about cyber attacks.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the source of the outage was “probably in Spain”. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said “all the potential causes” were being analysed and warned the public “not to speculate” because of the risk of “misinformation”.
Sanchez said about 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the power being consumed at the time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.
Sanchez was unable to say when power would be completely restored in Spain and warned that some workers would have to stay home Tuesday. Montenegro said Portugal’s power would be back “within hours”.
Power was restored overnight to around 6.2 million households in Portugal out of 6.5 million, according to the national electricity grid operator.
The outage rippled briefly into southwest France while Morocco saw disruption to some internet providers and airport check-in systems.
People were “stunned”, according to Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralysed Madrid metro system. “This has never happened in Spain”.
“There’s no (phone) coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” he told AFP.
In Madrid and cities across Spain and Portugal, panicked customers rushed to withdraw cash from banks, and streets filled with crowds floundering for a phone signal. Long lines formed for taxis and buses.
With stop lights knocked out, police struggled to keep densely congested traffic moving and authorities urged motorists to stay home.
In Madrid alone 286 rescue operations were carried out to free people trapped in lifts, regional authorities said.
Trains were halted across the country and on Tuesday morning, three trains were still stranded in Spain with passengers onboard, according to Transport Minister Oscar Puente.
Several high-speed rail lines are expected to resume normal service, including between Madrid-Barcelona and Madrid-Valencia, but disruptions remain between Barcelona-Alicante and between Madrid-Galicia (northwest), Puente wrote on X.
Railway stations in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Seville and four other major cities were kept open all night so that stranded passengers could sleep there.
Spain’s nuclear power plants automatically went offline as a safety precaution, with diesel generators maintaining them in a “safe condition”, the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) said.
Sanchez said the blackout, which hit just after midday, caused “serious disruption” for millions and “economic losses in businesses, in companies, in industries”.
The European Commission said it was in contact with Spain and Portugal over the crisis. European Council President Antonio Costa said on X: “There are no indications of any cyberattack”.
The huge power cut disrupted flights to and from Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, European air traffic organisation Eurocontrol said.
As of 7am, all Spanish airports were back to normal, the operator said.
Dublin Airport is also operating as normal this morning since power was restored.
In a statement, a daa spokesperson said: “Thankfully the issues which affected airports in Spain and Portugal on Monday have subsided and flights are operating as normal this morning.
“At Dublin Airport we’ve seen a full schedule of first wave flights depart, including many to Spain and Portugal, and we’re pleased to report no delays of note so far today.
The only cancellations so far today (a Ryanair flight to Brussels Airport and the return flight back to Dublin) relates to industrial action at Brussels Airport. In total on Monday there were 13 flights cancelled in and out of Dublin Airport.”
Parts of Greenland were deprived of phone, SMS and internet connections, possibly linked to the outage on the Iberian Peninsula, the operator said.
The affected areas on Greenland were located in the north and south of the vast Arctic territory.
Huge outages struck Tunisia in September 2023, Sri Lanka in August 2020, and Argentina and Uruguay in June 2019. In July 2012, India experienced a vast blackout.
In Europe, in November 2006, 10 million people were left without power for an hour in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. That was caused by a failure in Germany’s grid.
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