Johannesburg – After a few hours of blackout, Spain declared a state of emergency.
The BBC reports that the blackouts have caused considerable traffic disruption across Portugal and Spain.
Restaurants and bars closed early in Madrid.
Euronows said the outage has put a halt on subway trains and railroads, reducing telephone services and internet connections, and closing ATMs and signals in parts of Spain, Portugal and France.
The power failure on Monday (April 28, 2025) also affected Portugal, with reports taking responsibility for suggesting “technical issues” with energy connections between France and Spain.
But by midnight, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said power had regained in at least half of the countries.
Sanchez said authorities are still trying to find the cause of the blackout.
In Portugal, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro downplayed the proposal for a cyberattack and said there were no indications of that.
Portuguese power company Ren told local media that it could take a week to restore the country's electricity network.
The power outages have affected millions of people in Europe.
Euronows cited Teresa Ribera, vice president of the European Commission, as tasked with promoting clean energy, called the incident “one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe recently.”
