WEBDESK: Electricity has now been restored to most parts of Spain and Portugal after hours of unexpected power outages on Sunday, April 28. The sudden blackout affected major cities and towns across both countries, disrupting transport, businesses, and daily life.
Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a national emergency, deploying 30,000 police across the country to keep order as governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said there was “no indication” a cyberattack had caused the blackout, which began around 1033 GMT.
Nonetheless, rumours circulated of possible sabotage, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he had spoken to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Sanchez said that the country had suffered a loss of 15GW of electricity generation in five seconds, equivalent to 60% of national demand. Technicians were working to figure out why that sudden drop occurred, he said.
According to energy officials, the power outages were caused by a technical failure linked to a voltage dip in the Spanish network, which disrupted power flows from France. This ripple effect caused blackouts across large areas in both Spain and Portugal. However, after several hours of emergency efforts, power was gradually restored.
In Spain, regions such as Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia saw their electricity return by late afternoon. Portugal also managed to restore power to nearly all affected areas within a few hours. Metro services, train operations, and business activities that were temporarily halted due to the power outages have now resumed normal function.
Spain’s grid operator REE blamed a connection failure with France for triggering the power outages.
“The extent of the loss of power was beyond what European systems are designed to handle and caused a disconnection of the Spanish and French grids, which in turn led to the collapse of the Spanish electric system,” Eduardo Prieto said.
In Spain, power started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas in the early afternoon, and to parts of capital Madrid on Monday night. About 61% of electricity had been restored by late Monday, according to the national grid operator.
Enagas said it had activated emergency systems to meet demand during the blackout, while Prieto said returning systems to normal due to the power outages would take “several hours”.
Power was also gradually returning to various municipalities in Portugal late on Monday, including Lisbon city centre. Grid operator REN said 85 out of 89 power substations were back online.
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