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Massive power outage hits Spain, Portugal

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Sunday, May 4, 2025

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View from Preciados Street towards Callao Square on April 28, 2025, during the blackout, with Preciados still dark while Callao has partial power restored.
Image: Danieltarrino.

On Monday, April 28, at 12:33 p.m. local time, Spain’s power grid lost 15GW, the equivalent of 60% of its national demand, within five seconds. As this was too much of a strain for the European power grid, it tripped the grid interconnection between Spain and France. As a result, Spain, Portugal and the French Basque Country disconnected from the rest of the European power grid. The cause of power loss remained unknown.

System operations chief of Spanish grid operator REE, Eduardo Prieto, said in a news conference that "As the result of this disconnection and the serious imbalance of band generation that is in our electrical system, the electrical system collapsed". Because of the outage, a state of emergency has been declared.

Hospitals switched to back-up power generators, traffic lights stopped working so the police were conducting traffic manually at major intersections, trains stopped as the power was lost, between 200 and 500 flights were cancelled as airports had to switch to emergency generators, and over 50 million people were directed to go home, with long queues at bus stops, and no metro or trains in operation. According to the head of the regional government, emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations to free people trapped inside elevators in Madrid alone.

A young girl, Marina Sierra, speaks of difficulty getting home after her school was shut. "The building we were in was giving off smoke, they had to evacuate us quickly," she said. "I'm shocked because everything is totally out of control."

Joanly Perez, a 33-year-old doctor in Madrid, said "I left work and the power suddenly went and people started buying... People aren't sure what might happen and are buying basic essentials, just in case." With card payments systems not working, the shops that remained open switched to cash payments; many stores closed altogether due to lack of electricity.

French network operator RTE restored power to the French Basque Country within a few hours of the outage and helped recover Spain's electricity supply.

Spain had recovered more than 92% of its power by 5 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica, and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez vowed that everyone in Spain would have lights back on before Wednesday.

Madrid's minister for housing, transport and infrastructure Jorge Rodrigo Dominguez announced that most of the metro, except for line 7A, was back in service by 8am Tuesday morning. "This has been achieved thanks to the work of the underground professionals, who have made every effort to restore vital infrastructure for the people of Madrid as quickly as possible," he said "My sincere thanks for rising to the occasion, once again, in an exceptional and unprecedented situation."

Portugal's acting prime minister, Louis Montenegro, said that Portugal has asked the European Union Energy Regulators' Cooperation Agency for audit "We want a thorough investigation into the causes of the blackout. We need quick and urgent answers".


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