SPAIN & PORTUGAL BLACKOUTS
Massive power outage effects 60 million mense
POWER TRIP: Ambulances and police cars are parked outside Atocha station in Madrid
Image: Oscar Del Pozo / AFP
Lights flickered back to life in Spain and Portugal on Tuesday after a massive blackout affected almost 90 percent of the Iberian Peninsula.
According to AFP, barely a corner of the peninsula, which has a joint population of almost 60 million people, escaped the blackout which began on Monday.
No firm cause for the shutdown has yet emerged, though wild rumours spread on messaging networks about cyber attacks.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the source of the outage was “probably in Spain”.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said “all the potential causes” were being analysed and warned the public “not to speculate” because of the risk of “misinformation”.
Sanchez said about 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the power being consumed at the time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.
The outage rippled briefly into southwest France while Morocco saw disruption to some internet providers and airport check-in systems.
People were “stunned”, according to Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralysed Madrid metro system, adding: “This has never happened in Spain.”