The internet, airports, and transportation in both Spain and Portugal have been knocked out by the massive power outage that shut down the countries at 12:30 on Monday.
Traffic lights and shopping centers have been affected, and mobile networks have been knocked out. However, it is still unclear what caused the outage.
In Madrid and Barcelona, the subway has come to a standstill, and almost all train traffic in Spain has stopped. Several media outlets have reported that people have been trapped in the trains, but most have been evacuated.
Similar scenes are being reported from Portugal, where many traffic lights have been knocked out, leading to chaos in the larger cities, writes the newspaper Correio da Manhã.
Largest in history
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called an emergency meeting with the operator Red Eléctrica to get clarity on how the outage occurred.
According to media, the operator Red Eléctrica says it may take between six and ten hours to fix the fault "if everything goes well".
The company says it does not know how the outage occurred or how it could become so large and does not want to speculate about the causes.
However, the Portuguese equivalent REN says, according to the news agency Reuters, that the cause is "extreme temperature variations in the Spanish inland" which created atmospheric vibrations on high-voltage power lines.
The National Institute for Cybersecurity is simultaneously investigating whether it is a cyberattack, writes El País, information that the Spanish Vice-President of the EU Commission, Teresa Ribera, says there is no evidence for, according to The Guardian.
The power outage is the largest in Spain's history, according to Red Eléctrica, which says that the power is at least partially back on in the northern and southern parts of Spain and Portugal.
Flights affected
The Portuguese government is also holding an emergency meeting, and it is believed that the problems that led to the power outage occurred outside the country, reports AFP.
The country's largest hospital is running on reserve generators, and Lisbon's international airport has major traffic disruptions – which also applies to the airports of Barajas and El Prat in Madrid and Barcelona.
Industry has also been affected, including Ford's factory in Spanish Almussafes, which has come to a standstill.
However, the Spanish stock exchange is reported to be functioning.
Parts of southwestern France have also been affected, but the power is now restored, reports AFP.
On the other hand, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands are largely unaffected by the outage.
