Spainʼs National Assembly is investigating whether the countryʼs massive power outages are linked to a hacker attack.
This is reported by the Spanish newspaper El País.
Investigative judge José Luis Calama has opened the case to determine whether the blackout was caused by "information sabotage" of Spainʼs critical infrastructure. Calama admits the possibility of a "cyber attack" and therefore considers it necessary to determine the cause of the system failure.
On the eve of the incident, the operator of the Spanish power grid, Red Eléctrica, ruled out that the cause of the incident was a cyberattack, a human factor or a meteorological or atmospheric phenomenon. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez added that the government did not have "definitive information that would confirm a cyberattack". However, he did not rule out any hypothesis about the cause of the failure.
"Time is needed for an accurate analysis and avoidance of similar vulnerabilities in the future. Reforms will be carried out so that something like this does not happen again. We will demand responsibility from private operators," the official says.
José Luis Calama said that at around 12:30 on Monday, April 28, the power went out across the Iberian Peninsula. This disrupted the work of the health, energy, industry and transport sectors.
"According to the government, within five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced at that time, which is 60% of all consumption, was suddenly lost. This has never happened before," the judge noted.
He ordered Red Eléctrica and the National Cryptological Center to report on the reasons for the outage within ten days. The judge also requested a separate analysis from the National Police Information Directorate.
What happened
A massive power outage hit Spain and Portugal on the afternoon of April 28. Rail services were disrupted, hundreds of flights were cancelled, shops and hospitals were closed. Internet traffic in both countries fell sharply, by 90% in Portugal and 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.
As of the morning of April 29, electricity supply in Spain and Portugal has been almost fully restored.
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