Power Is Restored in Spain and Portugal. But the Cause of the Outage Remains a Mystery

For millions of people across Spain and Portugal, power was lost in an instant yesterday. Communications came to a halt, water was not running in places, metro systems ground to a standstill, and travellers were strained in airport departure lounges.

This morning, Spain’s electricity grid is almost entirely restored and all homes in Portugal now have power restored, some 18 hours later. The Madrid Metro has been busy as usual this morning, and residents in the Spanish capital cheered this morning as lights came back on.

It is one of the most significant power outages in European history, and the largest since a blackout hit Italy in 2003 that lasted three hours and affected 57 million people.

Read More: What to Know About the Power Outage that Hit Spain, Portugal, and France

What is believed to have caused the outage?

During Monday’s abrupt outage, it was reported that a possible cause could have been an astrological phenomenon, according to Portugal’s grid operator. 

However, Spain’s meteorological agency has since reported no such phenomena occurring across the country, nor any sudden fluctuations in temperature.

President of the European Council António Costa said on Monday afternoon that there were “no indications of any cyber attack.”

That conclusion has been supported by the operator of Spain’s national grid, Red Eléctrica, which has located where outages began on Monday. Two separate incidents of power outages led to instability in the grid leading to a “breakdown in interconnections with France,” leaving the Iberian grid isolated.

On Tuesday, Red Eléctrica ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause.

Investigations from both Portuguese and Spanish grid operators and cybersecurity teams are ongoing, but there is no clear answer as to what caused the outages yet.

A technical analysis to fully understand the outage could take weeks or even months, Kristian Ruby, secretary general of Eurelectic, a trade body, told the New York Times.

What was affected?

Everything from sport to transport was hit by Monday’s outage, with tens of millions affected. Tennis star Coco Gauff’s post-match interview was cut short as systems went down at the Madrid Open.

Metro services and trains across both countries were also halted, as well as traffic systems, causing havoc in multiple cities. Members of the public in Madrid were seen trying to get rides home from others as transport came to a halt. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said that his government will “demand responsibility from private operators,” in response to the outage while urging caution over misinformation about causes at this stage.

Sánchez said that determining the cause was essential so that a similar event “never takes place again.”