Lights flickered back to life in Spain and Portugal yesterday after a massive blackout hit the Iberian Peninsula, stranding passengers in trains and hundreds of elevators, while millions saw phone and Internet coverage die.
Electricity had been restored to more than 90 percent of mainland Spain early yesterday, the REE power operator said. The lights came on again in Madrid and in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.
Barely a corner of the peninsula, which has a joint population of almost 60 million people, escaped the blackout, but no firm cause for the shutdown has yet emerged, though wild rumors spread on messaging networks about cyberattacks.
Photo: AFP
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the source of the outage was “probably in Spain.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that “all the potential causes” were being analyzed and warned the public “not to speculate” because of the risk of “misinformation.”
Sanchez said about 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the power being consumed at the time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.
Sanchez was unable to say when power would be completely restored in Spain and warned that some workers would have to stay at home yesterday. Montenegro said Portugal’s power would be back “within hours.”
Power was restored overnight to about 6.2 million households in Portugal out of 6.5 million, the national electricity grid operator said.
The outage rippled briefly into southwest France, while Morocco saw disruption to some Internet providers and airport check-in systems.
People were “stunned,” said Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralyzed Madrid metro system.
“This has never happened in Spain,” he said. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing. I can’t even go to work.”
In Madrid and cities across Spain and Portugal, panicked customers rushed to withdraw cash from banks and streets filled with crowds floundering for a phone signal. Long lines formed for taxis and buses. With traffic lights knocked out, police struggled to keep densely congested traffic moving and authorities urged motorists to stay at home.
In Madrid alone 286 rescue operations were carried out to free people trapped in elevators, regional authorities said.
Trains were halted across the country and yesterday morning, three trains were still stranded in Spain with passengers onboard, Spanish Minister for Transport and Sustainable Mobility Oscar Puente said.
Railway stations in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Seville and four other major cities were kept open all night so that stranded passengers could sleep there.
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