Tens of millions left without power in Europe after ‘freak weather'

Times

28-04-2025

A massive power blackout hit Spain and Portugal at midday on Monday, affecting tens of millions of people and bringing most of the two countries to a halt.
The cuts paralysed transport infrastructures, railway stations, airports, businesses and buildings. Hospitals were forced to switch to back-up generators. Telecommunication networks also crashed, causing disruption to major mobile phone services.
The Portuguese grid operator said a rare atmospheric phenomenon in Spain had caused the power outages across the Iberian Peninsula and warned that fully restoring the country's power grid could take up to a week.
Both the Spanish and Portuguese governments called emergency meetings after outages were reported across the Iberian peninsula, including in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Lisbon.
Part of France was also affected 'for a few minutes in the Basque Country', French television reported. RTE, France's electricity grid operator, said that ' all power has since been restored' and it was assisting its Spanish counterpart.
The Spanish government said it was investigating and urged people not to use their cars unless absolutely necessary to avoid chaos on the roads as traffic lights went out. Hospital services were reported to be reduced to 'basic'.
'The government is working to identify the origin of this incident and dedicating all possible resources to resolve it as quickly as possible,' said the office of Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister.
Red Eléctrica Nacional, the Spanish grid operator, said the blackout was 'exceptional and totally extraordinary' and would take between six and ten hours to repair. Sánchez was heading to one of the company's control centres with at least one other government minister, El Pais reported.
According to Red Eléctrica, from 1pm onwards, voltage began to be restored in the north and south of Spain, which it said would help to progressively restore the electricity supply nationwide.
The National Institute of Cybersecurity (INCIBE) was also studying the situation in case it was a cyberattack.
Flight tracking websites suggested that air traffic was being delayed or re-routed away from affected airports, affecting thousands of passengers, including in Madrid and Lisbon. Aena, which operates dozens of airports in Spain, confirmed that some were affected.
'Contingency generators are active,' it said on X. 'Check with your airline, as there may be issues with access and ground transportation.'
Adif, the Spanish rail infrastructure network, reported power outages, disrupting train traffic across the country.
In Madrid, the power cut led to confusion as people left offices, schools and cafés and stood in the streets, trying to gather information on the blackout. Traffic lights were not working and the underground Metro train service closed.
Spain's nuclear power plants were shut down, as well as businesses such as the Seat car factory and the petrochemical complex in Tarragona.
Businesses sent some workers home. 'It's Putin, of course,' said one mother as she walked to pick up her child early from school.
Ben Lambert, 37, a British expat who runs a start-up called Checkfirst AI, in Lisbon, said: 'This started at about 11.30am today. It's really impacting families and businesses. My company had to cancel meetings this morning because of the outage. I live slightly outside the city — our water is out.
'We haven't heard anything yet about schools or nurseries. My wife is about to pick up our daughter soon — but I assume kids will start to come home soon, it's hard for them to do anything without electricity. So far, it is being reported as outage and they are managing it across the whole grid.'
A graph on Spain's electricity network website showing demand across the country indicated a steep drop at around 12.15 pm, from 27,500MW to near 15,000MW.
One of four tower buildings in Madrid that house the British Embassy have been evacuated.
In Portugal, the blackout is also widespread. The government said the incident appeared to stem from problems outside the country.
'It looks like it was a problem with the distribution network, apparently in Spain. It's still being ascertained,' António Leitão Amaro, a cabinet minister, said.
The Canary and Balearic Islands have not been affected, according to El Pais. The Canary Islands have six isolated systems, one per island, which are isolated from mainland Spain and from each other. In the case of the Balearic Islands, it is formed by two separate systems: Mallorca-Menorca and Ibiza-Formentera. They are interconnected, but also with the Peninsula via a submarine cable.