Electricity has been restored to more than 99% of mainland Spain , after the massive blackout that hit the Iberian Peninsula yesterday, the grid operator, Ree, announced this morning. In Portugal, too, the electricity grid is now "perfectly stabilized."
Yesterday at 12.30 a massive blackout plunged Spain, Portugal and the south of France into darkness: airports, trains and subways were all at a standstill, entire cities were left struggling with traffic lights out and enormous communication difficulties, without internet and with cell phones gradually running out of battery .
A nightmare whose causes are still uncertain with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who chaired emergency meetings, without taking any hypothesis out of the equation: "Nothing can be ruled out" . Not even sabotage or a hacker attack, as had been hypothesized in the early hours, even if during the day the EU Cyber Agency ruled out the possibility of an attack, speaking of a "fault".
The Portuguese electricity grid operator instead hypothesized a phenomenon, known as "induced atmospheric vibration" , which causes synchronization failures between electrical systems "causing subsequent disturbances along the interconnected European grid", linked to extreme variations in temperatures in the Spanish hinterland.
Technicians and authorities are working to understand what happened. The huge blackout, one of the worst recorded in Europe and reminiscent of the one in Italy in September 2003 that dragged the country into chaos, has sent the population into panic, with long lines and assaults on supermarkets to stock up on batteries and basic necessities. Trains evacuated, hundreds of passengers in single file in the subway tunnels trying to re-emerge to the surface , guided by the light of their cell phones, chaos in the Atocha and Chamartin stations in Madrid, but also in the Barajas and El Prat airports in Barcelona, where thousands of travelers due to canceled flights had to drag their luggage out of the airports, looking for emergency vehicles to reach their destinations: all of Spain has plunged into an emergency situation never experienced since the hot days of the pandemic in 2020.
Hospitals forced to ensure life support to patients with autonomous generators , while the authorities started appealing to citizens not to drive, except for essential reasons. And again, shops and restaurants closed as the hours passed.
Heavy repercussions also in Portugal and in some parts of France, for a few minutes. The Portuguese Prime Minister, Luis Montenegro, said that "everything indicates that the emergency situation originated in Spain" . And they are also investigating a possible cyber attack, which led to the partial collapse of services.
(Online Union)
