Spain and Portugal were hit by a widespread power outage on Monday that paralysed public transport, caused large traffic jams, delayed airline flights and left utility operators scrambling to restore the grid.
The Spanish and Portuguese governments convened emergency cabinet meetings after the outage, which also briefly affected a part of France, which borders northeastern Spain.
Spain’s interior ministry declared a state of emergency that will apply to regions that request this status. So far, Madrid, Andalusia and Extremadura have asked for the central government to take over public order and other functions.
Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday night: “Almost 50 per cent of the power supply has now been restored. Virtually all autonomous communities are reporting improvements. Citizens can and should rest assured.”
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Authorities were yet to establish what had caused the blackout and were not ruling out any hypothesis, he added in a televised address.
Mr Sanchez thanked the governments of France and Morocco where energy was being pulled from to restore power to north and southern Spain.
Earlier, Portugal’s utility REN said its power supply interruptions were due to a fault in the Spanish electricity grid related to a rare atmospheric phenomenon that caused extreme temperature variations in the country’s interior.
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REN said the wild variations in temperature in Spain’s interior caused anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines, a phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”.
It said it could take up to one week to fully restore power.
The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre issued a statement saying there was no sign the outage was due to a cyberattack.
Spain’s grid operator Red Electrica said power restorations could take between six and 10 hours.
By mid-afternoon, voltage was progressively being restored in the north, south and west of the peninsula, the company said.
The company declined to speculate on the causes of the huge blackout.
Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at Red Electrica, told journalists it was unprecedented, calling the event “exceptional and extraordinary”.
The operator of Dublin Airport said it is operating as normal but the power outage in parts of Spain and Portugal is affecting the airport’s operations and flight schedules.
As of 8pm, there were 13 flight cancellations: two inbound from each of Lisbon, Faro and Seville, and a total of seven outbound, including two to Faro and one to each of Lisbon, Marrakech, Santiago, Madrid and Alicante, the airport said in an update on social media.
It advised passengers to check directly with airlines for flight updates, as it said “further disruption over the remainder of this evening and tomorrow are possible”.
Portugal’s airport operator ANA said it did not expect flights to be able to take off from Lisbon until 10pm local time. Operations continue at Porto and Faro airports, but with limitations, it said.
Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was evacuated. There were traffic jams at Madrid city centre as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.
Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.
In Barcelona, residents walked into stores searching for battery-powered radios and civilians directed traffic at junctions along the Gran Via avenue that cuts through the city.
Play was suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament on Monday, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and his British opponent Jacob Fearnley off court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.
Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.
Lisbon’s subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.
A source at Portugal’s TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on backup generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.
In France, grid operator RTE said there was a brief outage but power has been restored. It was investigating the cause. -Agencies
