https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/large-parts-spain-portugal-hit-by-power-outage-2025-04-28/
Power begins to return after huge outage hits Spain and Portugal
MADRID/LISBON, April 28 (Reuters) - Power started returning to parts of the Iberian peninsula late on Monday after a huge outage brought most of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport, and forcing hospitals to suspend routine operations.
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.
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The cause was unclear, with Portugal suggesting the issue originated in Spain and Spain pointing the finger at a break-up in its connection to France.
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.
"This is something that has never happened before," he said.
Joao Conceicao, a board member of Portuguese grid operator REN, told reporters the company had not ruled out the possibility of a "very large oscillation in electrical voltage, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system".
"There could be a thousand and one causes, it's premature to assess the cause," he said, adding that REN was in contact with Spain.
Spain's grid operator REE blamed a connection failure with France for triggering a knock-on effect.
"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.
Earlier, parts of France suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.
POWER RESTORED
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 would take "several hours".
[1/10]People rest on the stairs at Atocha train station during a power outage, in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran Purchase Licensing Rights
In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida said city street lighting had not been fully restored so he recommended people stay at home, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."
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.
SHOPS AND METRO CLOSED
The blackout had wide-ranging effects across the peninsula.
Hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down, and some retailers closed, including grocery chain Lidl and furniture giant IKEA.
Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country and the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, while trains were cancelled in both countries.
"I just don't know who to turn to. My daughter in Barcelona is giving birth. We're going to miss the connection to get there," said Angeles Alvarez, stranded outside Madrid's Atocha railway station.
Sanchez said on Monday evening that about 35,000 train passengers had been rescued from trains while 11 trains still remained stranded in remote areas.
Images from a Madrid supermarket showed long queues at tills and empty shelves as people rushed to stock up on staples, while play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended.
The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.
There were traffic jams in Madrid city centre as traffic lights stopped working, with people in reflective vests appointing themselves to direct vehicles at intersections. Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.
Many Spaniards decided to take a half-day off, congregating in streets and plazas for impromptu get-togethers or cooking meals by candlelight at home.
Internet traffic plummeted by 90% in Portugal and 80% in Spain compared to previous-week levels, according to Cloudflare Radar, which monitors global internet traffic.
Power outages of such a magnitude are rarely seen in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.
In 2006, an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of Europe and as far as Morocco.
About 43% of Spain's energy comes from wind and solar power, with nuclear accounting for a further 20% and fossil fuels 23%, according to energy think tank Ember.
Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Jesus Aguado, Andrei Khalip, Catarina Demony, Aislinn Laing, Dominique Patton, Inti Landauro and David Latona; Writing by Nina Chestney,Michele Kambas and Charlie Devereux; Editing by Andrei Khalip, Timothy Heritage and Rosalba O'Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Spain, Portugal switch back on, seek answers after biggest ever blackout
MADRID, April 29 (Reuters) - Spain and Portugal switched their power back on after the worst blackout in their history, though authorities offered little explanation for what had caused it or how they would prevent it happening again.
Traffic lights were back on, train and metro services slowly returned and schools reopened. Commuters battled with delays to get back to work after an outage that had left people stranded in lifts and cut off from phone contact with their families.
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The sudden outage had seen the equivalent of 60% of demand in Spain drop in five seconds around midday on Monday.
While Spanish grid operator REE on Tuesday ruled out a cyber attack as the cause, Spain's High Court said it would investigate whether the country's energy infrastructure had suffered a terrorist strike while Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government had not ruled out any hypothesis.
"We must not rush to (conclusions) and (commit) errors through haste," Sanchez said on Tuesday. "We will find out what happened in those five seconds."
REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in Spain’s southwest that caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable.
Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of "disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances".
Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros, blaming the Spanish government for being too complacent about infrastructure in a system dependent on solar power with little battery storage.
SEAT said power returned to its Barcelona car plant at 1 a.m. on Tuesday but that it still wasn't at full production.
Volkswagen said its plant in Navarra lost a day of production - equivalent to 1,400 cars - as it was not able to restart until 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
Javier Diaz, a 24-year-old student, was forced to sleep in Madrid's Movistar Arena, a music venue, after finding himself stranded in the capital. Luckily, he had just finished walking the Camino de Santiago, a Christian pilgrimage route in northern Spain, and had a sleeping bag, "so we had quite a good night".
Madrid authorities put on free buses to get people to work on Tuesday and the metro and some trains resumed operating, although with delays. Construction worker William Galicia, 39, had seen three buses pass by completely full.
[1/11]Tourists check into a hotel without electricity during a power outage which hit large parts of Spain, in Ronda, Spain April 28, 2025. REUTERS/Jon Nazca Purchase Licensing Rights
"We'll have to be lucky for one with a bit more space inside so we can get in," he said.
A state of emergency was declared across many Spanish regions on Monday, with the deployment of 30,000 police. In Atocha station in Madrid, police and Red Cross workers handed out blankets and bottles of water.
Three people died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in the northwestern region of Galicia after switching on a generator to power an oxygen machine for one of the victims, regional emergency services said.
Bars and restaurants counted the cost of lost produce after fridges and freezers were switched off for more than eight hours.
"(We’re) scared it will go bad, that we have to throw everything away. We don’t know if the insurance will cover it," said Maria Luisa Pinol, 63, owner of the Granja Isabel bar in Barcelona, which had to shut on Monday night.
In Portugal, the government said hospitals were back up and running, airports were operational albeit with delays in Lisbon, while the capital's metro was restarting operations and trains were running.
Carlos Cagigal, an energy expert, said the outage probably happened because Spain's nuclear plants weren't operating at the time, meaning all of its electricity was coming from renewable sources that were feeding saturated substations.
When one of those substations failed and there wasn't adequate backup, safety protocols kicked in and the system disconnected, he said.
"Given these system imbalances...there is a small margin of risk of this happening again," he said.
Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition conservative People's Party, said the government should rethink its plan to shutter nuclear plants.
But on Tuesday, Sanchez ruled out an excess of renewable energy as a cause of the network's collapse.
He said Spain's nuclear power stations still hadn't resumed operating on Tuesday, which he said showed they were no more resilient than renewables.
He said demand at the time of the blackout was relatively low and that there was ample supply.
"What happened yesterday was an exceptional event in normal, everyday circumstances," Sanchez said.
($1 = 0.8787 euros)
Reporting by Inti Landauro,Pietro Lombardi, Corina Pons in Madrid, Joan Faus in Barcelona; writing by Aislinn Laing and Charlie Devereux; editing by Susan Fenton, Peter Graff and Mark Heinrich
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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