OVIEDO, Spain, April 28 — A sweeping blackout plunged Spain and Portugal into darkness on Monday, but European officials said there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the disruption, reported by AFP.
European Council President Antonio Costa assured citizens after speaking with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro. “Grid operators are working hard to uncover the cause and restore the electricity,” Costa wrote on X, adding, “at this point, there are no signs of a cyberattack.”
The sudden outage struck around 12:30 p.m. local time, freezing trains, paralyzing traffic, and trapping people in elevators. Streets in Madrid and Barcelona filled with confused crowds, as mobile networks collapsed and bank machines shut down. Across the cities, people lit their paths with phone flashlights and scrambled to withdraw cash.
Madrid’s famous tennis tournament, the Madrid Open, halted matches for the day. Traffic lights flickered out, and police officers struggled to control the swelling gridlock. Rail services were frozen nationwide, while airports in Madrid, Lisbon, and Barcelona faced delays and cancellations, according to Eurocontrol.
Spain’s nuclear plants, sensing the instability, automatically shut down as a safety measure. Diesel generators kept critical systems running, the Nuclear Safety Council reported.
Officials, while racing to restore the lifeblood of daily life, warned against hasty conclusions. Eduardo Prieto, head of Spain’s Red Electrica, said, “We cannot speculate about the cause.” Repairs were underway, but full recovery could take six to ten hours.
By late afternoon, glimmers of hope returned as parts of northern, southern, and western Spain began regaining power. Portugal’s grid operator, REN, confirmed the entire Iberian Peninsula had felt the blackout’s sting but remained uncertain when normal service would resume.
Southwest France also briefly dimmed but quickly recovered, its grid operator RTE reported. The true cause of the outage, spanning millions, still remains a mystery.
Meanwhile, internet usage in Spain plummeted to 17 percent of normal levels, according to NetBlocks. Hospitals relied on backup generators to power critical wards, while others endured outages.
Monday’s blackout joins a long history of massive power failures around the world — a stark reminder of how fragile modern infrastructure can be when the lights go out.
