Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said after an emergency government meeting on the situation, “we have no conclusive information about the reasons for this outage”.
“People were stunned, because this had never happened in Spain,“ said Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralysed metro system in Madrid.
In Madrid and elsewhere, customers rushed to withdraw cash from banks, and streets filled with crowds trying in vain to get a signal on their mobiles. Long lines formed for taxis and buses. Some people were trapped in elevators or inside garages.
With stop lights knocked out, police tried to direct traffic on roads that became densely congested. Authorities urged motorists to stay off the roads, but communication channels were limited.
Spain’s nuclear power plants also automatically went offline as a safety precaution, with diesel generators maintaining them in a “safe condition”, the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) said in a statement.
Sanchez said the blackout, which hit at 12:30 pm (1030 GMT), had caused “serious disruption” for millions and “economic losses in businesses, in companies, in industries”.
Sanchez urged people in Spain to limit the use of their mobile phones to avoid overburdening the network, saying “telecommunications are in a critical moment now”.
The head of operations for Spain’s grid operator Red Electrica, Eduardo Prieto, said that repairs were being carried out, but that it would take six to 10 hours to restore power to the country, “if all goes well”.
The huge power cut disrupted flights to and from Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, European air traffic organisation Eurocontrol said, adding it was too early to say how many would be affected.
Southwest France was also briefly affected, but power there was quickly restored, said France’s high-voltage grid operator, RTE.
Student Laia Montserrat had to leave her school when the lights went out.
Images posted on social media showed metro stations in Madrid plunged into darkness, with trains halted, and people in offices and hallways using the light on their phones to see.
Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported that hospitals used back-up generators to keep critical wards going, but some other units were left without power.
Huge outages struck Tunisia in September 2023, Sri Lanka in August 2020, and Argentina and Uruguay in June 2019. In July 2012, India experienced a vast blackout.
In Europe, in November 2006, 10 million people were left without power for an hour in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. That was caused by a failure in Germany’s grid.
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