04/28/2025

Electrical Power Begins to Return after Major Outage Hits Spain and Portugal

It also briefly impacted France

Power started returning to parts of the Iberian peninsula late on Monday after a huge outage brought parts of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport and forcing some hospitals to suspend routine operations.

Spain's Interior Ministry declared a national emergency and governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings as officials tried to find out what caused the mass blackout, which began around 10:33 GMT. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe.

Officials said the reasons for the blackout were unclear, with Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro saying there was "no indication" a cyberattack was the cause. Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

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