Madrid: Lights retreated for life in Spain and Portugal in the early hours of Tuesday, when a large -scale Blackout hit the Iberian peninsula passengers in trains and passengers trapped in hundreds of lifts, while millions saw phone and internet coverage.
The REE power operator said that more than 80 percent of Spain’s national power supply was restored on Tuesday. The capital of Madrid and Portugal came again.
Barely a corner of the peninsula, which has a joint population of about 60 million people, survived. But no firm cause of the shutdown has yet come, although wild rumors have spread on the messaging network about cyber attacks.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said that the source of outage was “perhaps in Spain”. Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that “all possible causes” were being analyzed and warned the public to “not speculate” due to the risk of “misinformation”.
Sanchez said that about 15 GW of electricity, more than half of the electricity was being consumed at that time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.
Sanchhez was unable to say that electricity in Spain would be completely restored and warned that some workers would have to stay at home on Tuesday. Montenegro said that Portugal’s power would return “within hours”.
According to the national power grid operator, electricity was restored in about 6.2 million houses in Portugal.
Outage briefly ripped into Southwest France, while Morocco saw some internet providers and the airport check-in system disruption.
According to the 19 -year -old construction activist Carlos Candori, people were “shocked”, who were to get out of the paralyzed Madrid metro system. “This has never happened in Spain”.
“There is no (phone) coverage, I cannot say to my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” he told AFP.
Cash queues
In the cities of Madrid and Spain and Portugal, nervous customers ran to withdraw cash from banks, and on crowded streets for a phone signal. Long lines formed for taxi and buses.
With stop lights, the police struggled to pursue densely crowded traffic and the authorities urged the motorists to stay home.
Regional officials said that 286 rescue operations alone in Madrid were done to free people trapped in lifts.
Trains were stopped across the country and late on Monday night, the Transport Minister said that there were still 11 trains with trapped passengers who needed help.
Railway stations were to be kept open all night in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevile and four other major cities so that trapped passengers could sleep there.
Spain’s Atomic Security Council (CSN) stated that Spain’s nuclear power plant automatically went offline as a security precaution, with diesel generators maintained them in a “safe position”.
‘Serious disruption’
Sanchez said that blackout, which became a hit only after noon, caused “serious disruption” for millions and “in businesses, in companies, in industries, economic loss in companies”.
The European Commission said that it was in touch with Spain and Portugal on the crisis. European Council President Antonio Costa said on X: “There are no signs of any cyber attack”.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelanski offered Sanchez to support in a call, given that three years after Russia became special in such emergency situations after attacking his country’s power grid in such emergency situations.
“No matter what happens, we are always ready to help and support our friends,” he said on X.
European Air Traffic Organization Eurocontrol said heavy power cuts from Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon disrupted flights.
France affected
Transport Caos also captured Barcelona, the second city of Spain, where local and tourists equally flooded the roads in an attempt to find out what happened.
When the lights came out, the student laai Montserrat left school.
“As the Internet was not coming back, he asked us to go home … (but) there were no trains,” he told AFP. “Now we don’t know what to do.”
Internet activity monitoring site Netblock reported that AFP The Blackout “damaged most parts of the country’s digital infrastructure”. It said that the web connection fell to just 17 percent of general use.
Spain’s L Pais newspaper reported that hospitals used back-up generators to maintain important wards, but some units were left without electricity.
Large -scale blackouts have affected other countries around the world in recent years.
In September 2023, Vishal Outage experienced a huge blackout in Tunisia, Sri Lanka in August 2020 and Argentina in June 2019 and in July 2012, India.
In Europe, in November 2006, 10 million people were left without electricity for one hour in France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Spain. This was caused by a failure in the Grid of Germany.
