Electricity in Spain and Portugal is largely flowing again

A massive power outage plunges the Iberian Peninsula into chaos – and millions of people into serious trouble. It takes hours for most people to breathe a sigh of relief. But one important question remains unanswered.

Following the massive power outage in Spain and Portugal, the situation is slowly returning to normal for millions of people on the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica announced around 4 a.m. that approximately 87 percent of the power supply had been restored. A few hours earlier, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had promised a return to normality on Tuesday in a televised address. In neighboring Portugal, power was also restored to 95 percent of the 6.5 million customers of the grid operator E-Redes around midnight, according to broadcaster RTP.

The Spanish government did not specify a cause for the blackout. Sánchez said no possibility has been ruled out. While the investigation into the cause is ongoing, according to Red Eléctrica, power was restored to large areas late in the evening, both in the capital Madrid – which had been without power for nine hours – and in regions such as Catalonia , Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, and Valencia.

During the day, countless people in Portugal and Spain were stuck in trains, subways, and elevators; vacationers were stranded at airports, and internet and telephone networks were down. Traffic lights failed, hospitals had to switch to emergency operation with power generators, and many Spaniards and Portuguese on the mainland were virtually unable to work. In Madrid, the international Masters 1000 tennis tournament, featuring top players such as German professional Alexander Zverev, also had to be interrupted.

According to the Spanish newspaper "El País," the massive blackout only affected the mainland, not the Canary and Balearic Islands, which belong to Spain. The capital, Madrid, was almost completely cut off from the outside world for hours. When the lights suddenly came back on long after dark, residents cheered loudly in the streets, from windows, and from balconies. Cries of joy like "Siii" (Yeeeees) and "Vivaaa!" (Hurray) could be heard from moving cars, while others enthusiastically sang the famous song "Y Viva España."

The problems in Portugal were caused by a disruption in the Spanish power grid due to a "rare atmospheric phenomenon," reported RTP and the British broadcaster Sky News, citing the Portuguese grid operator REN. Operations are being gradually restored, but full normalization of the grid could take a week "due to the complexity of the phenomenon." The Portuguese Ministry of Defense called on the population to remain calm.

According to the newspaper "El País," Spain's National Institute for Cybersecurity announced that it was investigating whether a hacker attack could have been behind the power outage. However, according to Portuguese EU Council President António Costa, there is currently no evidence of such a cyberattack .

In Germany, however, a widespread power outage like the one in Spain and Portugal is unlikely, according to the Federal Network Agency. "A widespread, long-lasting blackout is unlikely in Germany," the Bonn-based agency told the German Press Agency in response to an inquiry. The German power grid is designed with redundancy. This means that the failure of one line would be compensated for by another.