Spain and Portugal are reeling from a massive, unexplained power outage that knocked out traffic lights, caused chaos on roads and in airports, and prompted both countries to declare a state of emergency.
Portugal’s grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) said electrical supply was lost across the entire Iberian Peninsula, and in parts of France, shortly after midday. Hours later, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said authorities were still not sure what caused the blackout.
The outage took out lighting and power sockets, and caused subway systems to suddenly fail. In Madrid, traffic piled up on the roads after the lights went out. The cause of the blackout was unclear, but its impact was dramatic: transport hubs were shuttered and governments in both countries, which share a population of around 60 million people, hastily arranged emergency meetings to co-ordinate a response.
Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a state of emergency in the regions of Andalucia, Extremadura, Murcia, La Rioja and Madrid. After a late-night cabinet meeting, Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro declared an energy crisis, with the country’s grid operator warning that fully restoring power would be a “complex operation.”
By the end of Monday, grid operators said the supply of energy was gradually being restored in pockets of both countries. More than 87% of power had been restored in Spain by early Tuesday morning, with all affected substations functioning again, while videos on social media showed people in Portugal cheering at night as power was restored.
Earlier, Madrid’s mayor José Luis Martinez Almeida asked people to minimize their movements and only call emergency services if it was truly urgent. He also called on people to clear the roads for emergency workers. Later in the day, Madrid’s emergency services provider urged the country’s government to declare a national emergency, and local leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso asked the country to deploy the army.
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. Portugal’s prime minister blamed his neighboring nation for the scenes, saying his government did not yet know what caused the cut, but that it “did not originate in Portugal” and “everything indicates” that the problem started in Spain.
João Faria Conceição, head of REN, said Portugal was badly affected because it imports electricity from Spain in the morning, because Spain 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. The worst-case scenarios appear to have been averted, at least in the first hours of the blackout. Spain’s nuclear sites were declared operational and safe, while Portugal’s National Institute for Medical Emergencies said it had “activated its contingency plan,” running its telephone and IT systems through a back-up generator. Spain’s health ministry said the same process happened in hospitals there.
Source: Here