A massive power outage struck Spain and Portugal on Monday, April 28, leaving tens of millions into darkness across the Iberian Pennisual.
The blackout began at around 12:30pm local time, with Portuguese grid operator REN attributing the incident to a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”.
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The outage severely impacted transportation and essential services. In Lisbon, the metro system was halted, and Lisbon Airport suspended flights for over nine hours.
In Spain, major cities including Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona experienced power cuts, leading to the suspension of train services and traffic light failures.
Hospitals and emergency services operated on backup generators, and mobile networks were disrupted.
By Monday evening, power had been restored to 62 per cent of Spain’s substations and 85 of Portugal’s 89 substations.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed that 50 per cent of Spain’s electricity was restored within hours and thanked France and Morocco for energy support.
Sánchez said it was still too early to determine the exact cause of the outage, but that all possibilities remained on the table.
“Just how long it will take to get back to normal is something that [the national grid operator] Red Eléctrica still can’t say for sure,” he said.
“There has never been a drop to zero in the system before and the idea now is to keep on with the progressive and prudent restoration of the supply to avoid any setbacks over the coming hours.”
He urged non-essential workers to remain home while efforts continue overnight to fully restore power.
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