The current interruption affects Spain, Portugal

The power came out through Spain and Portugal on Monday, cutting trains, cell phones and internet networks, clogging the streets and trapping people in elevators before electricity began to return to some areas later.

The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared after an emergency government meeting on the situation, “we have no conclusive information on the reasons for this interruption”.

He said that no hypothesis could be excluded, warning the public “not speculate” due to the risk of “disinformation”.

“People were amazed, because this had never happened in Spain,” said Carlos Candori, a 19 -year -old construction worker who had to leave the metropolitan system paralyzed in Madrid.

“There is no coverage (phone), I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” he told AFP.

In Madrid and elsewhere, the customers hurried to withdraw cash from banks and streets full of crowds who were looking for in vain to obtain a signal on their cell phones. Long lines formed for taxis and buses. Some people were trapped in lifts or garage.

By precaution, the game was canceled at the Madrid Open tennis tournament for the rest of the day.

With the arrest lights eliminated, the police tried to direct traffic on the roads that became densely congested. The authorities urged motorists to stay outside the streets, but the communication channels were limited.

The railway operator of Spain Adif said that trains have been interrupted across the country.

The nuclear power plants of Spain have also been automatically offline as safety precautions, with diesel generators who maintain them in a “safe condition”, said the Spanish nuclear security council (CSN) in a note.

– “serious interruption” –
Sanchez said that the Blackout, which he hit at 12:30 (1030 GMT), caused “serious interruptions” for millions and “economic losses in businesses, companies, in industries”.

But he said that the grid technicians were working to solve “the problem as soon as possible”, adding that some parts of northern and southern Spain were already able to obtain power thanks to the interconnections from France and Morocco.

Sanchez urged people to Spain to limit the use of their cell phones to avoid overloading the network, saying that “telecommunications are in a critical moment now”.

The European Commission said she was in contact with Spain and Portugal on the situation, while the president of the European Council Antonio Costa said on X: “There are no indications of IT attacks”.

The head of the operations for the operator of the Spanish network Red Electric, Eduardo Prieto, said that repairs were performed, but that they would have taken from six to 10 hours to restore power in the country, “if all goes well”.

The Ren Operator of Portugal said that the entire Iberian peninsula was hit: 48 million people in Spain and 10.5 million in Portugal.

The huge caliber of energy interrupted flights from and to Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, said the European Air Traffic Organization Eurocontrol, adding that it was too early to say how many would be affected.

– affected France –
Southwest France was also briefly affected, but the power was quickly restored, said the operator of the French high voltage grid, RTE.

The chaos of transport also grabbed the second city of Spain, Barcelona, ​​where clubs and tourists flooded the streets in an attempt to find out what had happened.

The student Laia Montserrat had to leave her school when the lights went out.

“Since the Internet was not returning, they told us to go home … (but) there weren’t even trains,” he told AFP. “Now we don’t know what to do.”

The images published on social media showed metro stations in Madrid immersed in darkness, with stopped trains and people in the offices and corridors that use the light on their phones to see.

The Netblocks internet activities monitoring site declared to AFP that the Blackout caused a “loss of most of the country’s digital infrastructure”. He said the web connections precipitated only at 17 percent of normal use.

Spain newspaper El Pais reported that hospitals used backup generators to maintain critical departments, but some other units were left without power.

The great blackouts have affected other countries all over the world in recent years.

Huge interruptions hit 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 remained without power for an hour in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. This was caused by a failure in the German grid.

AFP