The day after a massive power blackout left Spain and Portugal at a standstill the electricity supply of both countries was restored, although transport and education remained disrupted, as authorities appeared to rule out the possibility that the outage was caused by a cyberattack.
The blackout began shortly after midday on Monday, causing widespread chaos in both countries. Residential and office buildings were plunged into darkness, and businesses, shops and restaurants had to close, while transport, particularly rail and underground, was severely affected.
Traffic light failures caused traffic gridlocks in many cities and mobile phone coverage was also down.
Power started to be restored on Monday evening, and by Tuesday morning the Spanish government reported that more than 90 per cent of supply had returned, with a similar percentage restored in Portugal.
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By midday Red Eléctrica, the company that manages Spain’s power grid, reported that supply was back to normal.
“Spain, fortunately, and with plenty of caution, is overcoming the worst of the crisis and is heading calmly towards the recovery of its electricity supply,” said the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. “What Spain has shown in the last 24 hours, as well as speed in restoring the electricity system, is that it has admirable people.”
However, as Mr Sánchez acknowledged, a large number of Spaniards were still affected on Tuesday, particularly travellers. Many passengers who were on or waiting for trains when the blackout hit had spent the night in railway stations or local sports halls. There were large crowds in Madrid’s Atocha station throughout the morning as uncertainty over the rail service continued.
The local rail service in the northeastern region of Catalonia was still severely disrupted throughout Tuesday and the Galician network was completely out of use.
Many schools across Spain were closed, while others opened but did not give classes.
After chaotic scenes at Lisbon airport on Monday, the situation there improved somewhat with the return of electricity.
Meanwhile, the cost of the blackout started to become apparent, with the CEOE employers’ association estimating the economic cost at about €1.6 billion. Self-employed workers may have lost as much as €1.3 billion, according to the ATA workers’ association.
As both Spain and Portugal recover from the crisis focus has turned to the possible cause of the blackout.
The prime minister, who said that any private companies found to be culpable will be brought to account, said the government was not ruling out any hypothesis, but it did “not have any conclusive information that it was a terrorist attack”.
Red Eléctrica, the company that manages the Spanish power grid, more roundly ruled out an attack in a preliminary investigation, according to Eduardo Prieto, its head of service operations. He also ruled out human error and said that the blackout had been preceded by two anomalous episodes in the grid, in the space of 1.5 seconds, which had taken place in the southwest of the country, where there is a large amount of solar generation.
Mr Prieto said “the system was not able to manage this extreme turbulence and it led to zero tension [in the grid].”
However, the national court has opened an investigation to find out if the outage was triggered by terrorist activity.
As Spain recovered from the power blackout, the opposition criticised the government for what it said was a lack of information. “The image of Spain in an electricity and telecommunications blackout is unseemly,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People’s Party, who suggested the government should have declared a national emergency.
