Across Spain and Portugal, as well as southwestern France, a power outage occurred around noon on Monday for reasons that are still unknown. Countless people were stranded on trains, subways and elevators, tourists were stranded at airports, and internet and phone networks also stopped working.
Traffic lights were not working, hospitals had to switch to emergency power from generators, and many Spaniards and Portuguese on the mainland were effectively unable to work.
The Masters 1000 international tennis competition in Madrid was also canceled. A video on Platform X shows the audience leaving the court area in the dark.
The capital, Madrid, was almost completely cut off from the outside world for more than nine hours. When the lights finally came back on, residents celebrated enthusiastically in the streets, through windows and from balconies. Joyful shouts could be heard from cars, and many enthusiastically sang the famous song "Viva España".
In neighboring Portugal, power was also restored to most households around midnight. In the video: celebrations in Lisbon when the power was restored. As reported by RTP television, citing the operator of the E-Redes network, the full restoration of the network could take up to a week, "due to the complexity of the phenomenon."
Spain does not rule out any possibility
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called an emergency cabinet meeting in Madrid. In a televised address last night, he said that the country had lost 15 gigawatts of electricity production in five seconds, equivalent to around 60 percent of Spain's total electricity demand.
"Something like this has never happened before," he said.
The prime minister announced a return to normalcy on Tuesday. Sanchez did not specify the cause of the power outage. "We are not ruling out any possibility," he said.
Spain's National Institute for Cybersecurity announced, according to the newspaper "El Pais", that it is investigating whether a hacker attack could have caused the power outage. According to the Portuguese President of the EU Council, Antonio Costa, there is currently no evidence to suggest such a cyberattack.
First in France?
Spanish grid operator REE blamed a failure in its electricity connection with France for the blackout.
"The scale of the blackout exceeded what European systems were designed for, leading to the separation of the Spanish and French grids. This, in turn, caused the collapse of the Spanish electricity grid," said REE director Eduardo Prieto.
Before the massive blackout in Spain and Portugal, parts of France and Andorra - which had already experienced power outages lasting seconds - the French broadcaster RTE said it had increased power supplies to parts of northern Spain after the outage.
Portugal: the cause is probably in Spain
According to Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, the cause of the power outage "is probably in Spain." He told reporters in the evening that it was a "serious and unprecedented situation."
João Conceição, a board member of REN, the Portuguese electricity supplier, said the power outage "could have a thousand and one causes."
Several Portuguese media outlets reported that a rare atmospheric disturbance had probably occurred in Spain. "Due to extreme temperature fluctuations in the interior of Spain, there have been anomalous vibrations on power lines." These atmospheric vibrations caused disruptions in the synchronization between different power grids.
Is there a risk of a general power outage in Germany?
A widespread power outage like the one in Spain and Portugal on Monday is not expected in Germany, the German Federal Network Agency in Bonn said. "A widespread and long-lasting blackout in Germany is unlikely," the agency said.
The president of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, confirmed to ARD that such a scenario is "highly unlikely" and that something similar has not happened in Germany so far.
The German power grid is designed redundantly, which specifically means that one transmission line can always fail, and another can immediately take over its function.
"This means that we have more safety systems in the German electricity grid," said Müller. "And, of course, in case of extreme emergency, we have so-called black-start power plants at our disposal, which could restore the grid. So Germany is well prepared."
A spokeswoman for the Federal Network Agency also pointed to the numerous protection mechanisms in Germany. These mechanisms are constantly checked and adjusted as necessary.
Bonus video:
