Spain, Portugal turn power back on, seek answers after one of Europe's worst outages

The Associated Press

· Posted: Apr 29, 2025 11:08 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Electricity was restored to astir each of Spain and Portugal connected Tuesday greeting pursuing a monolithic powerfulness chopped affecting the full Iberian Peninsula, but the origin of the blackouts remained a mystery.

The wide outage lasted astir 8 hours — successful immoderate regions longer — and unopen down subway networks, ATMs and postulation lights, portion disrupting flights and mobile communications connected Monday. 

By 7 a.m. local time connected Tuesday, much than 99 per cent of vigor request successful Spain had been restored, the country's energy relation Red Electrica said. Portuguese grid relation REN said each of its powerfulness substations were backmost online.

As beingness began to instrumentality to mean — with schools and offices reopening, postulation easing and nationalist transport restarting — authorities successful Spain person yet to supply further explanations for what caused 1 of the astir superior blackouts to ever instrumentality spot successful Europe.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government's priorities were twofold: restoring the country's electrical strategy and uncovering the causes of the blackout, truthful that a akin lawsuit "never takes spot again."

"We are analyzing each the imaginable causes without discarding immoderate hypothesis," Sanchez said.

Such wide electrical nonaccomplishment has small precedent connected the Iberian Peninsula oregon successful Europe.

WATCH | Power outage leaves radical stuck successful Spain's capital:

Eduardo Prieto, manager of services for strategy operations astatine Spain's energy operator, noted 2 steep, back-to-back "disconnection events" earlier Monday's blackout. Speaking astatine a news conference connected Tuesday, helium said much probe was needed to recognize wherefore they took place.

Red Electrica, successful a connection connected Monday night, pointed to a "strong oscillation successful the powerfulness flow," which triggered "a precise important nonaccomplishment of generation."

A root with nonstop cognition of the assemblage said that astatine the clip of the outage, the Spanish grid was moving with precise small "inertia," which is the vigor moving successful a large, rotating wide similar a generator oregon successful immoderate concern motors.
 
Inertia helps to stabilize the grid by slowing down the complaint of frequence alteration erstwhile there's a abrupt driblet oregon emergence successful request oregon generation.

"In those conditions [when determination is small inertia] if there's a driblet successful accumulation for immoderate reason, the grid loses [more] inertia and everything fails. And successful a blackout, you request to rebuild inertia earlier bringing things backmost online, which takes a fewer hours," the root said, requesting anonymity.

No antithetic upwind lawsuit oregon motion of cyberattack

Spain's meteorological agency, AEMET, said that it had not detected immoderate "unusual meteorological oregon atmospheric phenomena" connected Monday, and nary abrupt somesthesia fluctuations were recorded astatine their upwind stations.

Portugal's National Cybersecurity Centre on Monday dismissed speculation astir foul play, saying determination was nary motion that the outage resulted from a cyberattack.

European Council President Antonio Costa besides said determination were "no indications of immoderate cyberattack." Teresa Ribera, an enforcement vice-president of the European Commission, ruled retired sabotage but emphasized the outage "is 1 of the astir superior episodes recorded successful Europe successful caller times."

While Red Electrica also ruled retired a cyberattack, Spain's High Court said it would unfastened an investigation to find whether an "an enactment of machine sabotage" could person been committed "against captious Spanish infrastructure."

'Electrical instability' affecting Barcelona's metro

Power has been restored astatine the Caja Mágica tennis analyzable and the Madrid Open resumed connected Tuesday with a packed schedule, pursuing a time successful which 22 matches had to beryllium postponed.

At Spain's largest bid stations, droves of travellers waited Tuesday greeting to committee trains or rebook tickets for journeys that were cancelled oregon disrupted.

At Madrid's Atocha station, hundreds of radical stood adjacent screens waiting for updates. Many had spent the nighttime astatine the station, wrapped successful blankets provided by the Red Cross. Similar scenes played retired astatine Barcelona's Sants station.

By 11 a.m. section clip Tuesday, work connected Madrid's subway system was afloat restored. In Barcelona, the strategy was operating normally, but commuter trains were suspended owed to "electrical instability," the institution that runs the service, Rodalies Catalunya, said connected X.

Emergency workers successful Spain said they had rescued immoderate 35,000 passengers connected Monday stranded on railways and underground, with the blackout turning sports centres, bid stations and airports into makeshift overnight refuges.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, distant areas of Greenland were chopped disconnected from important outer entree owed to the powerfulness outage crossed the Iberian Peninsula — but the Greenlandic telecom company Tusass said connected Tuesday that work was restored overnight.

Tusass said connected Monday that it had mislaid transportation to outer instrumentality based successful Spain that provides telephone, internet, TV and vigor services.