Spain, Portugal power outages: State of emergency declared as mass blackout brings countries to standstill

Power is starting to return to parts of the Iberian peninsula after a huge outage brought parts of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport, and forcing some hospitals to suspend routine operations.

Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a national emergency and governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings as officials tried to find out what caused the mass blackout, which began midmorning local time on Monday. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe.

Officials said the reasons for the blackout were unclear, with Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro saying there was “no indication” a cyberattack was the cause.

In Spain, power started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas in the early afternoon, and to parts of capital Madrid on Monday night.

Power was also gradually returning to various municipalities in Portugal late on Monday, including Lisbon city centre.

“We do not yet have conclusive information on the reasons for this (power) cut,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a national address, adding that there had been no signs of any security issues.

Spain’s Interior Ministry said a national emergency would be declared in regions that requested it. Madrid, Andalusia and Extremadura have asked for the central government to take over public order and other functions.

In Portugal, electricity distributor REN said it had restored production at a hydroelectric and thermoelectric plant, and was prioritising supply resumption to hospitals and transport.

It was possible the blackout had been caused by a “very large oscillation in electrical voltage, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system”, REN board member Joao Conceicao told reporters.

Hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country and the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, while trains were cancelled in both countries.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006, an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of Europe and as far as Morocco.

with AP and DPA