The mobile network, airports, local traffic, traffic lights, and shopping centers. In both Spain and Portugal, almost everything was shut down in the massive power outage that occurred at 12:33 pm and plunged the countries into darkness.
Ten hours later, half of all Spanish households and about a third of Portuguese households have regained power.
However, many problems persist. Spain's Transport Minister Oscar Puente reported at 10 pm that passengers on up to eleven long-distance trains were still stuck in their carriages.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised address that half of his countrymen have their power back.
We don't know when things will return to normal, this has never happened before.
30,000 police officers have been deployed to make Spain safer during the night.
Citizens can and should feel safe, says Sánchez.
Largest in History
Three regions – Andalusia, Extremadura, and Madrid – have requested that a state of emergency be declared, which the Interior Ministry has done. Even in other regions, a state of emergency will be declared if the regional governments request it.
It is still unclear what caused the outage – the largest in Spain's history. Many rumors have been circulating, and in the absence of clear information, misinformation has spread.
The experts don't know what happened, but all possible causes are being analyzed, says Sánchez.
He says that Spain lost the equivalent of 60 percent of all demand in just five seconds, which caused the entire system to collapse. This also affected Portugal, which imports much of its electricity from Spain.
Minor Air Traffic Disruption
Reports from Portugal describe chaotic scenes in traffic and food stores, but even there, power is starting to return, albeit at a slower pace than in the neighboring country.
Air traffic was relatively lightly affected. According to BBC, a total of 45 flights were canceled in Spain, in Madrid and Barcelona, it was less than 3 percent of all departures.
Lisbon's international airport was harder hit, where nearly every third departure was canceled during the day. The airport reopened at 9 pm and will be in operation throughout the night.
Parts of southwestern France were also affected by the power outage, but power has now been restored, reports AFP. However, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands were spared from the outage.
