WORLD NEWS: MASSIVE OUTAGE HITS SPAIN, PORTUGAL
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All of Spain and Portugal lost power on Monday, which shut down internet and phone networks, stopped trains and trapped passengers in lifts, according to officials.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez travelled to the state electrical network operator’s offices to receive a briefing as the Spanish government frantically attempted to determine the cause of the massive outage.
Red Electrica, the operator, advised people not to make assumptions about the source of the loss and stated that it would probably take six to ten hours to restore electricity nationwide.
Social media users shared pictures of metro stations that were completely dark, with trains stopped and people in workplaces and halls relying on their phones’ lights to see.
The national road authority DGT told motorists to stop driving, because stop lights were out, forcing vehicles to slow to avoid collisions and police officers to direct traffic at intersections.
AFP journalists in Madrid and Barcelona saw people coming out into the streets, holding their smartphones up to try to connect to a network.
People were also trapped in lifts, Spanish media reported.
The internet activity monitoring site Netblocks told AFP the blackout caused a “loss of much of the country’s digital infrastructure”. It said web connections plunged to just 17 percent of normal usage.
Portugal’s REN operator said in a statement to AFP that all the Iberian peninsula was affected by the blackout, adding that the outage occurred around midday.
There was also a brief blackout in southwest France, that country’s electricity operator said, but power was now 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 said that the power cut halted trains across the entire country;
Airports operator Aena said there were flight delays, but the country’s airports were still operational thanks to “contingency electricity systems”.
Spain’s Red Electrica said it had managed to start restoring power in the north and south of the country but the problem was not yet 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 the torchlight.
It also reported that hospitals’ core departments were able to keep functioning because of back-up 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. In July 2012, India experience 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.
AFP
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