Major power outages across large areas of Spain and Portugal, as well as parts of southern France, knocked out traffic lights, disabled ATMs and disrupted public transportation and airport operations on Monday, April 28.
Officials did not say what caused the outages, but several denied any foul play.
There were traffic jams in Madrid city centre as traffic lights stopped working, Cadena SER radio station reported, as well as people trapped in stalled metro cars and lifts in the Spanish capital.
Panicked residents tried in vain to get a signal as the phone lines cut.
“There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” Carlos Condori told AFP . “People [are] stunned, because this had never happened in Spain”.
At Cibeles Square, one of Madrid’s busiest thoroughfares, the blackout of traffic lights unleashed a cacophony of sirens, whistles and car horns as police tried to control the pile-up of traffic.
Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said 11 trains remained stranded with passengers on board, nearly nine hours after the blackout.
“Grid operators in both countries [Spain and Portugal] are working on finding the cause, and on restoring the electricity supply,” the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, wrote in a post on X.
Costa was the Prime Minister of Portugal between 2015 and 2024.
“At this point, there are no indications of any cyberattack,” he said.
Power outages swept across much of the Iberian Peninsula around 10:30 GMT — 12:30pm local time in Spain, and 11:30am in Portugal.
Parts of southern France were also briefly affected, but the service was quickly restored.
Critical infrastructure was heavily impacted: Metro systems in Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon were shut down, while major airports such as Madrid-Barajas and Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado faced significant delays and partial closures.
According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, the outage “set Spain back to the 19th century”.
“Trains are not operating and traffic lights are down, causing chaos. Many cities are completely dark,” Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said, reporting from Valencia Airport in Spain.
“Authorities have stated that it is the first time in history such a large-scale blackout has occurred,” she added.
Spain and Portugal, home to around 60 million people together, were the worst affected.
° Spain : Major urban centres such as Avila, Madrid, Murcia, Galicia, Alicante, Zaragoza, Barcelona and Seville reported widespread disruptions. The Canaries and Balearic Islands were not affected.
°Portugal : Lisbon and Porto experienced comparable challenges.
°Southern France : Parts of the French Basque Country saw brief power outages. But officials from the French electricity transmission network said the interruptions lasted only a few minutes.
°Morocco : Some reports suggested that internet providers in Morocco also struggled to keep their services up, briefly, because of network connections with France and the outages there.
The Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended for the day. Organisers said there would be no more action on Monday “in order to guarantee general safety”.
Madrid’s firefighters carried out more than 200 “elevator interventions” across the city while health services carried out 167 interventions, most for respiratory issues and anxiety attacks.
Meanwhile in Lisbon, according to local media reports, people rushed to grocery stores to stock up on water and non-perishable goods.
What Caused The Power Outage?
Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said that everything points to the major blackout starting in Spain.
The exact cause is still unclear, and while there’s no evidence yet of a cyberattack, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he isn’t ruling anything out.
He warned against speculation, but said “no cause can be discredited at this point”.
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), the bloc’s cyber security arm, said current evidence points to a cable fault.
But experts have also in recent weeks warned that an excess of solar power generation in the grid could trigger blackouts. In early April, Belgium’s electricity grid operator cautioned that too much electricity generation could destabilise the grid.
According to a report by Bloomberg , Spain has seen a record number of hours with negative power prices in recent months as more solar and wind energy has been fed into the grid. However, until now, the oversupply hadn’t led to blackouts.
What Is The Latest On The Ground?
Electricity has returned to parts of northern, southern and western Spain, the grid operator said later on Monday.
Spain’s Transportation Minister Oscar Puente said medium- and long-distance train services are unlikely to resume before tomorrow (today, Tuesday, April 29).
Meanwhile, grid firm, Red Electrica, has estimated that full restoration could take between six to 10 hours.
Power has now been restored in parts of Catalonia, Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, Castile and Leon, Extremadura, Andalusia, and La Rioja, according to authorities.
According to Spanish news agency EFE , electricity consumption in Spain had reached over 50 percent of the usual level by 4:30pm local time (18:30 GMT).
Portugal’s grid operator, REN, said that production has resumed at the Castelo do Bode hydroelectric plant and the Tapada do Outeiro thermoelectric facility.
With these stations back online, energy consumption is gradually recovering across Portugal, starting in areas near the plants and extending outward, REN said.
