A massive power outage struck Spain and Portugal today, April 28, 2025, affecting millions across the Iberian Peninsula, including major cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Seville. The blackout began around 12:30 p.m. local time, plunging much of the region into darkness and disrupting critical infrastructure, such as transport, both train and aircraft.
What caused the outage? Early reports point to a failure in a high-voltage interconnector in France, which caused a disconnection of the Iberian Peninsula from the European power grid. Portuguese distributor E-Redes described it as a “problem with the European electricity system,” leading to cascading failures. A reported fire in southern France damaging a crucial power line may have triggered the issue, though investigations are ongoing.
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The blackout affected nearly the entire country of Spain, with Red Eléctrica, Spain’s grid operator, reporting a loss of over 10 GW of demand (from ~26 GW to ~12 GW) in seconds. Madrid’s Barajas international airport faced delays, metro systems in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia shut down, and traffic lights failed, causing widespread traffic chaos. The Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, and Spain’s parliament and newsrooms were left without power.
Red Eléctrica and E-Redes are working with energy companies to restore power in phases, with all resources dedicated to resolving the issue. Power restoration is expected to take hours, and in some cases, could extend longer due to the complexity of restarting the grid after a full blackout. E-Redes noted that controlled power cuts were implemented in some areas to stabilize the network.
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