Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged citizens to stay at home and keep telephone lines clear as the country grapples with a huge electricity blackout affecting the Iberian Peninsula.
Spain and Portugal lost power early Monday afternoon in a massive outage that affected public transport systems, traffic lights, hospitals, manufacturing, payment systems and nuclear power plants.
“We don't have conclusive information on the causes, and I ask the public not to speculate,” Sánchez said, adding that the government was looking into every possible factor that may have contributed to the blackout.
The prime minister also asked Spaniards to avoid making unnecessary phone calls so as to avoid overloading the country’s communications system, which has been affected throughout the day.
The power outage, which left the entire of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity, appears to have been triggered by an imbalance in the country’s electrical grid. Eduardo Prieto, director of Spanish transmission system operator Red Eléctrica, said the blackout had been caused by a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that led Spain’s power system to “disconnect from the European system, and the collapse of the Iberian electricity network at 12:38.”
Prieto refused to speculate as to what had caused the power surge, but said electricity should be fully restored to all parts of Spain by the end of the day. As of the late afternoon, the lights were back on in most of the northernmost and southern regions, thanks in part to the supply of power from France and Morocco via the interconnectors that link both countries to Spain.
Spain’s opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and its support for Ukraine against Russia's aggression have made it a major target for cyberattacks, and throughout the day there was heightened speculation that the crisis could be the result of nefarious action. The Joint Cyberspace Command, which reports to the Defense Staff and oversees cybersecurity, and the National Cryptologic Center, have both launched investigations into the blackout.
But in Brussels, European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera appeared to dismiss that possibility, saying that there was “nothing that allows us to say that there is any kind of sabotage or cyberattack.”
"We are working with the utmost caution and we will have to continue investigating to determine what are the specific causes that have generated this incident, which is one of the most serious that have been recorded in Europe for a long time," Ribera added.
Spain and Portugal have a highly integrated energy grid that operates as an energy island and is linked to the rest of Europe through a small number of cross-border interconnections with France.
The European Commission has for years called for greater integration of the countries’ energy systems, but while Madrid, Lisbon and Paris have repeatedly signaled their will to move forward with that plan, advances have been slow to come.
Massive power outages in Europe have previously been triggered by minor disruptions to national grid systems. In 2003 the entirety of Italy was left without power after a power line in Switzerland was disabled by a tree.
Two countries left in the dark
Traffic lights blinked off and metro systems ground to a halt across Spain and Portugal as the flow of power was abruptly cut, with some people stranded inside. Large numbers of people were trapped in elevators and darkened shops were obliged to ask clients to pay for purchases in cash.
As the sun began to set in both countries, most of the population was still without power.
At the Madrid Open tennis tournament, matches were suspended and thousands of fans were left in the dark as the venue lost power. Organizers said on X they were working to “restore normality as soon as possible.”
Despite the widespread disruption to businesses across the region, the Spanish Stock Exchange has confirmed it is operating normally and continuing to trade, even as some key traders experience connectivity problems.
A Spanish government spokesperson said that, despite the chaotic situation, no significant security incidents had been recorded. As a precautionary measure, 30,000 members of the the country's police force and the Civil Guard gendarmerie corps were deployed across the country. Additional reserve units were placed on alert and are ready to be activated if needed.
In Portugal, where snap elections are set to be held in less than a month, national authorities moved swiftly to blame the blackout on problems that had taken place outside the country’s borders.
In a statement to the press, Portugal's caretaker prime minister Luís Montenegro insisted that the outage had likely originated in Spain, and that the country’s grid had gotten caught up in a "domino effect." While he was unable to say how long the power outage would last, he said he was hopeful that power would be restored by the end of the day.
Montenegro and opposition leader Pedro Nuno Santos canceled an election debate that had been scheduled for the evening.
Spanish airports have remained open throughout the blackout, but around 20 percent of flights were canceled in order to reduce air traffic over the country. Transport Minister Óscar Puente confirmed that all mid and long-distance trains would be cancelled until further notice, but train stations in Madrid, Barcelona and other major cities will remain open to accommodate stranded travelers.
Among those likely to have their travel plans interrupted by the blackout are the scores of politicians attempting to reach the European People’s Party’s annual conference, which is scheduled to begin in Valencia on Tuesday. The event takes place on the six-month anniversary of the deadly floods that killed 228 people, and was expected to be marred by major protests.
In the midst of the power outage, however, the authorization to carry out a key demonstration on Monday evening was rescinded, and shortly thereafter the protests' organizers announced that they had called off the assembly "out of a sense of responsibility" in light of the blackout.
Residents of Barcelona had differing reactions to the blackout: While some openly celebrated being sent home from their offices early, others masked their alarm with light jokes amid confusion and lack of access to information.
“We should have prepared one of those 72-hour survival kits,” quipped a middle-aged lady on a bus, referring to the crisis stockpile recommendation recently proposed by the European Commission.
An internal e-mail seen by POLITICO and sent by one of the city’s largest universities urged students and staff to go home, warning that “if the incident is not resolved, we cannot guarantee the functioning of the electrical devices or the emergency lights.”
“Is this a cyberattack? A terrorist attack?” one student leaving university said.
In Brussels, a spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed that it was “in contact with the national authorities of Spain and Portugal and with ENTSO-E (the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity) to understand the underlying cause and impact of the situation.”
The restoration of the power supply in some parts of Madrid later on Monday was met with cheers, with locals sitting in darkened terraces springing to their feet to applaud street lamps that suddenly blazed with light.
This story is being updated. Max Griera reported from Barcelona and Aitor Hernández-Morales, Zia Weise and Seb Starcevic reported from Brussels.