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2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout

On 28 April 2025, at 12:33 CEST (11:33 WEST; 10:33 UTC), a major power outage occurred across the Iberian Peninsula affecting mainland Portugal and Peninsular Spain, where electric power was interrupted for about ten hours in most of the Peninsula and longer in some areas. The power cut caused severe difficulties in telecommunications, transportation systems, and essential sectors such as hospitals and emergency services. At least seven people in Spain may have lost their lives due to outage related circumstances like candle fires or generator exhaust fumes.[1]

Minor power cuts lasting seconds or minutes occurred in adjacent regions of Andorra and parts of southwestern France.[4] Reports indicated issues with the European synchronous electricity grid. Traffic lights in many places stopped working and metro lines had to be evacuated.[5]

Impact

Portugal

In Portugal, the blackout made most basic services inoperational, including stores, supermarkets,[6] pharmacies[7] and electronic payment systems.[8] Hospitals resorted to generators to maintain operations.[9] Traffic lights and transit systems were brought to a halt, causing road accidents.[8] Additional police officers were deployed to deal with traffic problems caused by the failure of traffic lights. Mobile networks also experienced severe limitations, particularly voice calls and data services.

The commuter rail and rapid transit services were stopped due to signaling issues, and trains were evacuated.[10][11] Electric buses, boats, ridesharing bicycles and trams were unable to depart their stations.[12] Lisbon Airport operated with limitations and closed at around 13:00 (WEST), although flights were allowed to take off from around 21:38 (WEST). Meanwhile, airports in Porto and Faro switched to generator power.[13]

During the blackout, there was a scramble to stock up on essential items such as food and water, as well as batteries, lighting devices, and radios.[8] The state-owned water company Águas de Portugal asked consumers to moderate their water usage to prevent system failures during the power cut.[14]

The cabinet of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro held an emergency meeting over the power cut,[15] and declared an energy crisis on 28 April. The Prime Minister planned to ask the European Union for an audit of the affected electrical systems.[16] Also took the decision to keep Tapada do Outeiro black start capability available until at least 2030 and expand that capability to 2 at least more locations, Alqueva Dam and Baixo Sabor Dam,[17] so that the recovery from a full blackout would be quicker.

Spain

Police handling traffic in Cartagena, Spain, due to disabled traffic signals.
Passengers waiting at the Chamartín railway station in Madrid during the blackout
View from Preciados Street towards Callao Square during the blackout, with Preciados still dark while Callao has partial power restored.

Spanish train operator Renfe said that all trains had stopped due to the outage.[18] Around 35,000 passengers were rescued after being stranded across the rail and underground systems.[19] Madrid's Barajas International Airport was left without power.[4]

Spanish authorities reported that the country's nuclear power plants were taken off the grid automatically due to the loss of grid power[20] – four reactors were generating power at the time, while three were conducting scheduled maintenance. Backup generators automatically supplied cooling to keep all seven reactors safe.[21] Telecommunications and internet services were also affected, with Netblocks saying that network traffic plunged to just 17 percent of normal usage.[22]

The city of Madrid activated its emergency plan PEMAM (Plan Territorial de Emergencia Municipal del Ayuntamiento de Madrid). Most businesses and shops had to close, train and metro lines stopped, and banking was non-functional. Police had to intervene to control traffic and bring security. Confusion and fear spread in episodes reminiscent of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and at the same time some streets and terraces had a cheerful ambience and near-festive mood.[23]

King Felipe VI's meeting with the president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, was unaffected because the blackout only partially affected the Palacio de la Zarzuela, and the King was able to maintain the institutional agenda for the day.[24] The Congress of Deputies, the Bolsa de Madrid, the Parliament of Catalonia and the Palacio de la Moncloa were left without power.[25] The Senate suspended its parliamentary activity for 29 April.[26]

The Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla were unaffected.[5][27] Travellers entering Gibraltar by land from Spain reported delays due to the unavailability of IT services at the Spanish border post. Gibraltar itself was not affected, as it is not connected to the European grid.[28]

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council over the power cut.[15] To alleviate the power cut, Morocco delivered 900 MW of electricity through the Spain-Morocco interconnection that crosses the Strait of Gibraltar from Fardioua to Tarifa, while France sent up to 2 GW of electricity through power lines supplying Catalonia and the Basque Country.[29]

The employers' organization CEOE estimated that the outage resulted in economic losses valued at €1.6 billion.[29]

At least seven people died as a result of the blackout in Spain. Six deaths were recorded in Galicia, including three members of the same family who died of carbon monoxide poisoning believed to have been caused by a faulty generator in a home in Taboadela. The seventh death was recorded in a fire at a house in Madrid that left 13 others injured.[1]

Andorra

Andorran electricity supplier Forces Elèctriques d'Andorra said that the power outage from Spain impacted the principality for a few seconds. An automatic recovery system connected Andorra's power grid to France's. Phone and internet operator Andorra Telecom reported a similar outage for internet connections.[30]

France

Electricity transmission system operator Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE) reported a power outage that lasted only a few minutes in the French Basque Country.[31]

Morocco

Internet providers such as Orange experienced issues in Morocco due to servers in Spain being offline.[32]

Restoration

Empty shelves in the fruit section of Mercadona La Vaguada in Cartagena, Spain, as a result of the panic buying triggered by the outage.

Portugal

Electricity was gradually restored starting at approximately 17:00 (WEST) using the two available systems that had black start capabilities, the 138MW Castelo do Bode hydropower dam and the 990 MW natural gas power station Tapada do Outeiro.[33] Around 22:30, power had been restored to 50% of the population, increasing to 80% by around 00:00.[34] The grid was fully restored in Portugal by early 29 April.[35] The island regions of Madeira and the Azores, unconnected from the European grid, remained unaffected.[36]

Spain

At approximately 16:00 (CEST) on 28 April, Spanish electrical operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE) estimated it would take "between six and ten hours" to restore service[37] calling the outage "exceptional and totally extraordinary".[38] Later in the day, airports were back to operation with 20% reduced capacity, and the Minister of Transport Óscar Puente stated that long and medium distance train services would not resume until the next day.[39] The regions Aragón-Cataluña and Galicia-León were the first to reconnect to the main grid. The international power lines from Morocco and France also contributed.[40][41][42]

By 07:00 on 29 April, electricity had been restored to 99% of energy demand,[19] and full restoration was achieved by 11:00 that same day.[29] Certain institutions, such as the Ministry of Defence and the Navy headquarters, still suffered power outages on 29 April despite the general restoration of the electricity supply.[43]

Possible causes

The causes of the power outage are currently under investigation by authorities.

The blackout was purportedly due to two fluctuations in the electrical grid, the second of which caused Spain's power system to disconnect from the European system and collapse the Iberian electricity network.[44][45]

A fire, reported to be in Southern France between Perpignan and eastern Narbonne, which damaged an extra-high-voltage power line, was identified as a possible cause by Portugal's Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN),[4] but this was dismissed by the Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE), which declared that there were no fires in the area.[46]

The Spanish cybersecurity agency INCIBE [es] was reported to be investigating the possibility that a cyberattack caused the incident,[47] although initial analysis did not show any evidence of an attack.[48] On the morning of 29 April, REE attributed the outage to a disconnection of the grid in the south-west of Spain. The institution ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the blackout and announced that it was investigating the cause of the disconnection.[49][50] Sánchez insisted on the possibility of a cyberattack being the cause of the power cut, asking for Parliamentary inquiry committees and independent reports from Brussels.[51]

Citizens must know that the government will get to the bottom of this. Measures will be taken, and all private operators will be held accountable. To this end, the Spanish government has concluded a commission of inquiry led by the Ministry for Ecological Transition.[51]

— Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain

Audiencia Nacional judge José Luis Calama [Wikidata] initiated preliminary investigations to determine whether the national outage could have been an act of sabotage against critical Spanish infrastructure, which, according to newspaper Vozpópuli [es], would be considered an act of terrorism.[52]

There has been speculation[weasel words] that renewable energy caused the outage, but this claim is contested. Some energy analysts are concerned that Spain's power grid needs upgrades to keep up with the fast integration of solar and wind energy.[53][54][55] However other researchers maintain that Spain and Portugal are well-equipped to manage these intermittent energy sources, and the size and nature of the power cut make it unlikely that renewables were to blame for the blackout.[55][56][57][58] Power cuts can occur no matter what kind of energy source is used to run the grid.[55]

Professor Lion Hurth has pointed to the oscillations in the grid prior to the blackout which occur when a grid has insufficient dampening as the starting point for any investigation into the failure.[59]

At a press conference on 29 April, Sánchez dismissed allegations that renewable energy caused the power cut, calling them "lies" and criticising those who blamed the blackout on Spain's reliance on wind and solar power.[56] Fundacion Renovables, a pro renewable Spanish energy think tank stated, "the fact that Spain has a high production of electricity from renewable sources has no link to the grid failures that occurred on Monday."[56]

Misinformation

Several false and misleading claims were circulated regarding the origins of the power cut. Messages were spread online claiming that it was caused by a Russian cyberattack, falsely attributed to CNN International and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.[60] It was also falsely attributed to the Portuguese electricity company EDP Group.[8]

Some media outlets, including CNN, The Guardian and Reuters, reported that REN claimed it was because of a supposed "rare atmospheric event" called "induced atmospheric vibration", causing "synchronization failures between the electrical systems". REN has denied releasing either of these statements.[61][60]

Deaths

A couple and their son died of carbon monoxide inhalation in Taboadela, Ourense, due to a generator being used indoors. The older family member required a mechanical ventilator, which prompted the use of the generator.[1] In Alzira, Valencia, a 46-year-old woman that depended on an oxygen machine died.[1] In Madrid, at Carabanchel neighborhood, a woman died in a fire caused by a candle. The fire trapped several people in a building. Several people were harmed in that same event.[1][62] In Catalonia 25 people were harmed by malfunctioning generators or misuse of them.[62]

Reactions

Von der Leyen spoke with Sánchez and posted on X: "I reaffirmed the European Commission's support in monitoring the situation with national and European authorities and our Electricity Coordination Group. We will coordinate efforts and share information to help restore the electricity system, and agreed to stay in close contact."[63]

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after speaking with Sánchez, offered his country's assistance based on the experience it has gained throughout the targeting of its electrical infrastructure in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[64][65][66]

See also

References

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