Power returning in Spain and Portugal after large parts hit by blackout – but what caused it?
Power supplies have been returning in Spain and Portugal after large parts, including the capitals Madrid and Lisbon, were hit by a huge outage on Monday.
Millions of people were caught up in the chaos after the mass blackout brought many areas to a standstill, with trains stopping, planes grounded, internet and mobile phone services cut, traffic lights and ATMs down, and some routine hospital operations suspended.
Spain‘s interior ministry declared a national emergency and the two countries’ governments convened emergency cabinet meetings as officials tried to find out what caused the outage which started around 12.30pm (11.30am UK time).
A police car passes as vehicles wait in a traffic jam on the other side of the road in Madrid. Pic: Reuters
People gather outside Barcelona-Sants train station during a power outage. Pic: Reuters
Blackouts in Spain and Portugal: Follow latest updates
About half the electricity supplies in Spain have now been restored by the grid operator, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday evening, adding the rest should be back by Tuesday.
In a televised address, Mr Sanchez said authorities have not yet worked out what had caused the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula and were not ruling anything out.
He asked the public to refrain from speculation, and urged people to call emergency services only if really necessary.
Eduardo Prieto, the head of operations at Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica, said the event was unprecedented, calling it “exceptional and extraordinary”.
Meanwhile, Portugal‘s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said power in his country would be fully restored in the coming hours.
He said all the state services remained operating in the country despite all the difficulties. He also said there was “no indication” a cyberattack was the cause.
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A chef in Madrid works in a dark kitchen with the aid of his phone’s flashlight. Pic: Reuters
Fans are seen after Madrid Open matches were suspended due to a power outage. Pic: Reuters
‘Rare atmospheric phenomenon’
Portugal’s grid operator Ren claimed the outage was caused by a fault in the Spanish electricity grid, related to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”.
Ren says that, due to extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
It also says that given the complexity of the issue, it could take up to a week for the network to fully normalise again.
It comes as France briefly lost power following the outages in Spain and Portugal, French grid operator RTE said.
Parts of Madrid underground were evacuated and traffic lights in the city were not working, according to local media.
Play was suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament due to the outage – with Britain’s Jacob Fearnley forced off court in a critical moment during his third-round tie with Grigor Dimitrov.
The loss of power affected scoreboards and the camera above the court. Organisers later announced the tournament would not be able to resume on Monday, with afternoon and evening sessions cancelled.
Airports affected
Aena, which runs international airports across Spain, said earlier that “some incidents were occurring” at the airports due to the outage.
The company added in a statement: “Contingency generators are active. Please check with your airline, as there may be disruptions to access and ground transportation.”
People ‘had nowhere to go’
Maddie Sephton, who is from west London, was on the Madrid Metro when the power outage occurred.
“We got on the train and everything was fine,” she told Sky News. “But then everything went dark.”
She was stuck on the train for 20 minutes until a staff member opened the doors manually.
A metro worker passes underneath barricade tape to enter Legazpi Metro station after the outage. Pic: Reuters
A view shows a transmission tower during a power outage near Barcelona in Spain. Pic: Reuters
Mrs Sephton says she was on her way to the airport at the time – and had to exit the station by walking up 15 flights of stairs with her luggage.
“No lifts are operating – making it difficult for elderly people with limited mobility,” she added.
Above ground, she said that “everyone is just standing around and waiting”.
Medical staff relocate a patient in Pamplona, Pic: AP
Bars were unable to take card payments, cash machines are down, and traffic lights weren’t working either.
“I currently don’t have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet – I can’t withdraw any money from the ATM,” she added.
“A couple have offered to let us get a ride in their taxi to the airport. Their flight is at 4.30pm so they’re pretty relaxed – but my flight back to London is at 3pm and I’m nervous.”
Mrs Sephton said: “People are just walking but have nowhere to go, and nothing to do.”
Traffic lights have stopped working following a power outage in downtown Lisbon, Portugal. Pic: AP
People try to board a crowded bus after the subway stopped running following a power outage in Lisbon, Portugal. Pic: AP
Meanwhile, thousands of passengers had to be evacuated after the blackout left the metro service in Barcelona without power.
The blackout was also reported to have forced the closure of the city’s tram system and rendered some traffic lights there inoperable.
It has also impacted medical facilities, with hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia forced to suspend routine medical work. Staff have been able to attend to critical patients using power from backup generators.
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It comes as Metrovalencia, the urban rail system, encompassing both metro and tram services in Valencia, said traffic in the city was “disrupted” due to a “general power outage in the city”.
The outage also hit the Portuguese capital Lisbon and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country.
Portugal’s government said the incident appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told national news agency Lusa.
“It looks like it was a problem with the distribution network, apparently in Spain. It’s still being ascertained,” Cabinet Minister Leitão Amaro was quoted as saying.
Pro-Western candidate Nicusor Dan has unexpectedly beaten hard-right populist George Simion in the Romanian presidential election.
Mr Simion, 38, and his rival – a centrist who’s mayor of Bucharest – faced off in the second round of the contest.
According to the official tally, Mr Dan was leading by nearly nine percentage points with more than 98% of the votes counted.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Dan and his supporters celebrated the exit polls. Pic: Reuters
After exit polls suggested he wasn’t going to win, Trump-supporting Mr Simion rejected the result and said estimates put him 400,000 votes ahead.
Speaking after voting ended, Mr Simion said his election was “clear” as he posted on Facebook: “I won!!! I am the new President of Romania and I am giving back the power to the Romanians!”
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George Simion on Trump, the EU – and his message to UK
Romania’s last election was annulled after its highest court ruled the leading candidate, nationalist Calin Georgescu, should be disqualified due to claims of electoral interference by Russia.
The result is surprising because in the first round, 38-year-old Mr Simion, founder of the right-wing Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), took 40.96% of the vote – almost 20 points ahead.
George Simion rejected the polls but official counting saw him slip behind. Pic: Reuters
Supporters of Mr Dan celebrated on the streets of the capital Bucharest. Pic: AP
An opinion poll on Friday had it much closer, but still suggested the two men were virtually tied.
Mr Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician, is running as an independent and has pledged to clamp down on corruption.
He is also staunchly pro-EU and NATO, and has said Romania’s support for Ukraine is vital for its own security.
When voting closed at 9pm local time, 11.6 million people – about 64% of eligible voters – had cast ballots. About 1.64 million Romanians living abroad also took part.
About 11.6 million people – 64% of eligible voters – cast ballots. Pic: AP
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The election is being closely watched across Europe amid a rise of support for President Donald Trump.
After polls closed, Mr Dan said “elections are not about politicians” but about communities and that in the latest vote “a community of Romanians has won, a community that wants a profound change in Romania”.
“When Romania goes through difficult times, let us remember the strength of this Romanian society,” he said.
“There is also a community that lost today’s elections. A community that is rightly outraged by the way politics has been conducted in Romania up to now.”
Israel has said it will allow a “basic quantity of food” into the besieged enclave of Gaza to avoid a “starvation crisis” following a near three-month blockade.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was “based on the operational need to enable the expansion of the military operation to defeat Hamas”.
Gaza, where local authorities say more than 53,000 people have died in Israel’s 19-month campaign, has been under a complete blockade on humanitarian aid since 2 March.
It comes as global food security experts warn of famine across the territory and after a UN-backed report issued last Monday which warned one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.
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Israel ramps up bombing in Gaza
The statement from the prime minister’s office said it would “allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip”.
“Such a crisis would endanger the continuation of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to defeat Hamas,” it added.
“Israel will act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance in order to ensure that the assistance does not reach the Hamas terrorists.”
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Gaza is ‘a slaughterhouse’ says surgeon
It comes after a British surgeon working in Gaza said in a video to Sky News the enclave is now “a slaughterhouse” amid Israeli bombardment.
Israel has just ramped up its offensive in Gaza, with Palestinian health officials reporting at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed troops had begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.
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In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.
Israel has launched an escalation to increase pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
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A British surgeon working in southern Gaza has compared the region to a “slaughterhouse” because of the daily bombardment from Israeli forces.
Dr Tom Potokar, who is based at the European Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, offered his assessment of Israel’s military offensive after Palestinian health officials reported at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have confirmed their troops have begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.
In a video, Dr Potokar said it was “another day of devastation here in Gaza”, adding: “The stories coming from the north… absolutely horrific… particularly around the Indonesian Hospital.”
“I mean, it’s difficult to describe in words what’s happening here… [with the] constant sound of bombardment jets overhead.
“If Cambodia was the killing fields, then Gaza now is the slaughterhouse.”
Mourners at a funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al Shifa hospital, in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
His reference to Cambodia’s killing fields refers to when more than a million people were murdered in mass executions and buried by the extreme communist guerrilla group, the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.
In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.
A family in grief at a funeral on Sunday in Deir al Balah, central Gaza. Pic: Reuters
Dr Potokar described the impact on those on the ground, saying: “We’ve been operating all morning so far and [treating] awful explosive injuries… [including] one young woman with leg fracture and shoulder fracture and a large wound on her buttock, who came in yesterday and is not yet aware that everyone in our family was killed in the onslaught.”
Israel has launched an escalation of its war in Gaza to ramp up pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
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Israel ramps up bombing in Gaza
On Sunday, it announced and launched “extensive” new ground operations in Gaza.
It came after airstrikes killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children, overnight and into Sunday, hospitals and medics said, and forced northern Gaza’s main hospital to close.
A spokesperson for the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said: “Complete families were wiped off the civil registration record by Israeli bombardment”.
The ministry also said the bombardment had forced the closure of the Indonesian Hospital, the main hospital serving people in northern Gaza.
Nasser hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, said more than 48 people – mostly women and children – were killed in the area which includes tents sheltering displaced people.
In Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, at least 12 people were killed in three separate strikes, according to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Nuseirat camp’s Awda Hospital.
Meanwhile, the Gaza health ministry and the Palestinian Civil Defence – which operates under the Hamas-run government – reported that 19 people were killed in several strikes in Jabalia in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
Read more from Sky News:
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Ceasefire talks are taking place in Qatar this weekend – with Israel saying they involve discussions on ending the war as well as a truce and hostage deal.
A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said any lasting truce must include the demilitarisation of Gaza as well as the exile of Hamas militants.
But a senior Israeli official added there had been little progress so far during talks in Qatar’s capital Doha.
Sky News Arabia reported Hamas had proposed freeing about half its Israeli hostages in exchange for a two-month ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
A Palestinian official close to the discussions said: “Hamas is flexible about the number of hostages it can free, but the problem has always been over Israel’s commitment to end the war.”
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