A rare atmospheric phenomenon is deemed to be behind the outage, while a cyberattack seems unlikely.
Spain, Portugal and parts of southwestern France have been hit by a widespread power blackout that paralysed public transport, caused large traffic jams, delayed flights, and left residents unable to access cash from ATMs, as utility operators scrambled to restore the grid.
Investigations into the causes of the outage on Monday were ongoing, but Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said there was “no indication” of a cyberattack. Speaking to reporters, he also said he expected electrical power to be restored “in the coming hours”.
The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Center also said there was no sign the disruption was due to a cyberattack.
The entity responsible for transmitting electricity in Portugal, REN, said a rare atmospheric phenomenon in Spain due to extreme temperature variations in the country’s interior was to blame for the power outages across the Iberian Peninsula.
The Spanish and Portuguese governments convened emergency cabinet meetings after the outage, which also briefly affected a part of France bordering northeastern Spain.
The head of operations of Spain’s grid operator REE, Eduardo Prieto, told a news conference that restoring power to the Spanish electric grid could take six to 10 hours. Spain’s grid operator Red Electrica later said electricity had returned to parts of northern, southern and western Spain.
The Spanish government urged residents to stay put to avoid traffic chaos. “The government is working to identify the origin of this incident and dedicating all possible resources to resolve it as quickly as possible,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s office said.
The European Commission said it was “in contact” with local authorities “to understand the underlying cause” of the blackout. “The commission will keep monitoring the situation and make sure that there is smooth information exchange amongst all relevant parties,” a spokesperson for the EU’s executive arm said.
Outage knocks out subway networks, traffic lights
There were traffic jams in Madrid city centre as traffic lights stopped working, Cadena SER radio station reported, as well as people trapped in stalled metro cars and lifts in the Spanish capital.
Panicked residents tried in vain to get a signal as the phone lines cut. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” Carlos Condori told AFP. “People [are] stunned, because this had never happened in Spain.”
At Cibeles Square, one of the Spanish capital’s busiest thoroughfares, the blackout of traffic lights unleashed a cacophony of sirens, whistles and car horns as police tried to control the pile-up of traffic.
Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from the Spanish city of Valencia, said the outage had seemed a temporary one at first and “everyone carried on doing their normal business”. “But a little later, it turned out to be much larger. ATMs are not working, traffic lights are not working.”
The Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and his British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.
The Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.
Portugal’s utility REN said “all plans for the phased restoration of energy supply are being activated, in coordination with European energy producers and operators”.
“REN is in permanent contact with official entities, namely the National Civil Protection Authority. At the same time, the possible causes of this incident are being assessed,” a spokesperson said.
In a later statement, REN said that fully restoring the country’s power grid could take up to a week.
In France, grid operator RTE said there was a brief outage, but power had been restored. It was investigating the cause.
“An electrical incident is currently affecting Spain and Portugal, the cause of which remains to be determined,” RTE said. “In France, homes were without power for several minutes in the Basque Country. All power has since been restored.”
RTE said its teams had been mobilised to assist the Spanish grid operator, and 700MW of Spanish consumption had already been restored via France by RTE.
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