Power mostly restored after Spain portugal outages
Power outages across Spain and Portugal have mostly been restored to tens of millions of people.
Both countries remain under states of emergency after electrical supply was lost across the entire Iberian Peninsula, and in part of France, on Monday. The outage brought businesses to a standstill, halted elevators, knocked out traffic lights, and caused chaos on roads and in airports.
On Tuesday morning, Spain’s grid operator said that power had been supplied to 99% of the country, but the transport minister warned that some trains would not operate, or would run at a reduced capacity – including the high-speed rail network.
The outage took out the lighting and power sockets, causing subway systems to suddenly fail and causing traffic piled up on the roads in Madrid.
“I was driving and suddenly there were no traffic lights … It was a bit of a jungle,” Luis Ibáñez Jiménez told CNN. “I saw a massive bus coming, and I had to accelerate a lot to go past it.”
João Faria Conceição, head of grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), said Portugal was badly affected by the power outages because it imports electricity from Spain in the morning, because the neighboring nation is one hour ahead and electricity produced by its solar plants is cheaper than producing it internally, during those hours.
“We are peripheral,” Conceição told a news conference Monday evening. While Spain received support from France and Morocco, Portugal had no country to turn to for emergency supplies of electricity.
Spain and portugal power outage cause
Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro on Monday also said the power blackout did not originate in Portugal as everything indicates that the problem started in Spain.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday that the authorities were still not sure of what caused the blackout, as his Portuguese counterpart blamed Spain.
Antonio Costa – president of the European Council and Portugal’s former prime minister – said although the cause of the outage was not clear, there were “no indications” of a cyberattack.
After a late-night cabinet meeting between the two countries, Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a state of emergency in the regions of Andalucia, Extremadura, Murcia, La Rioja and Madrid.
Outage in portugal and spain
For a few hours on Monday, all modern routines were suspended. Cash replaced card payments, police officers were using arm signals to direct traffic, and restaurants, supermarkets and stores closed their doors. Madrid’s firefighters carried out 174 elevator interventions across the city, its Emergency Information Office said, and some shoppers stocked up on essentials and canned goods.
But travel was hit harder. Flights at major airports in the region were suddenly delayed or canceled, with travelers scrambling to adapt.
A holidaymaker inside Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport, Ellie Kenny, told CNN hundreds of people were standing in the dark in lines, with no air conditioning or running water. Shops were only accepting cash.
Trains were also suspended in Spain. And darkness suddenly descended in subway tunnels; video posted on social media showed blackened train cars stuck in standstill on platforms in Madrid, where the metro was suspended and entrances to stations were taped off.
Sporting events were also impacted too. The Tennis fans at the Madrid Open filed out of courts after the outage caused play to be suspended.
Emilie Grandidie, a spokeswoman for France’s electricity transmission operator RTE, told CNN there was “a small power cut” in the French Basque Country; “It lasted only a couple of minutes and was restored very quickly,” she said.
Spain’s transportation minister said medium and long-distance trains won’t resume service until at least Tuesday, and the impact of a huge backlog in flights could stretch throughout the week.
