Spain and Portugal Declare Emergency After 12-Hour Power Outage Cripples Infrastructure

Unprecedented Power Outage disrupts daily life across the Iberian Peninsula as authorities scramble to restore power and investigate the cause.

Madrid [Spain], April 29:
A massive and unexplained 12-hour power outage plunged Spain and Portugal into chaos on Monday, disrupting transportation, airports, and daily life, and forcing both countries to declare a state of emergency, CNN reported.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed that nearly 50 percent of the nation’s electricity supply had been restored by late Monday. The outage, described as unprecedented, resulted from the sudden loss of 15 gigawatts of power — about 60 percent of Spain’s electricity demand at the time.

“This is something that has never happened before,” Sanchez said, adding that efforts were underway to fully restore power nationwide by Tuesday morning. However, he admitted that recovery was uneven across regions.
“Some autonomous communities have already recovered up to 97 percent of their supply, while others, unfortunately, are below 15 percent,” he noted.

Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska declared a state of emergency in multiple regions, including Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, La Rioja, and Madrid.

Meanwhile, Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro announced a national energy crisis, attributing the blackout’s origin to outside Portuguese territory, likely in Spain.
“We have learnt of a general blackout in the electricity grid, which originated outside our territory, most probably in Spain,” Montenegro said in a televised address.

Portugal has established a crisis management office and urged citizens to conserve energy as restoration efforts continue, CNN reported.

The blackout left thousands stranded, with metro trains stuck between stations in the capitals of both countries, Euronews Portugal reported. Emergency sessions were convened by the Spanish government at Moncloa to monitor and manage the evolving situation.

Authorities in both nations are continuing to investigate the cause of the unprecedented outage.