Blackout in Spain and Portugal — power supply almost restored

Spain and Portugal have almost fully restored electricity supplies after a large-scale failure in the power system.

CNN writes about this.

Both countries remain in a state of emergency, with the entire Iberian Peninsula and parts of France losing power the day before. The blackout paralyzed businesses, stopped elevators, turned off traffic lights and caused chaos on roads and at airports.

On the morning of April 29, Spanish grid operator Red Electrica said it had restored 99.95% of demand. However, the transport minister warned that some trains would not operate or would run at reduced capacity, including high-speed rail.

Power was restored to most of Portugal on the evening of April 28, the day of the blackout. Portuguese Prime Minister Luiz Montenegro says that while the cause of the outage is not yet known, everything indicates that the problem originated in Spain. Spain is still investigating the cause of the outage.

European Council President and former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa said that while the cause of the outage has not yet been determined, there are "no signs" of a cyberattack.

What happened?

Power outages in Spain and Portugal occurred on the afternoon of April 28. Rail services were disrupted, hundreds of flights were canceled, shops and hospitals were closed. Internet traffic in both countries fell significantly — by 90% in Portugal and by 80% in Spain.

Life came to a standstill for a few hours: cash replaced card payments, police used hand signals to direct traffic, and shops, supermarkets and restaurants closed. Madrid firefighters rescued people from elevators 174 times on Monday, and some shoppers stocked up on non-perishable goods.

At the same time, the worst-case scenarios were avoided: Spainʼs nuclear facilities operated safely, and hospitals switched to backup generators.

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