The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for Spain and Portugal following a huge power outage. The blackouts on Monday caused widespread disruption, affecting millions.
The Foreign Office updated its travel advice in response to the blackouts which included urging people to follow the advice of local authorities. It said: “We are aware of reports of power outages across Andorra, mainland Spain and mainland Portugal and are monitoring the situation. There may be travel disruption, check with your tour operator or airline for more information before travelling.
“Follow the advice of the local authorities and monitor local updates.”
The advice, which remains in place at the time of writing on Tuesday, did not recommend against travelling to the countries or any of its islands which are popular with British tourists.
The outages, which hit major cities, including the capitals Madrid and Lisbon, crippled transport networks, telecommunications, and essential services.
Water pumps were also affected by the incident on Monday afternoon.
The cause of the power cuts remains unknown as officials continue to investigate.
Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said there is “no indication” of a cyber attack, while the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez has warned against speculation.
Spain, where a state of emergency remains in place, has denied suggestions that the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”.
Power to Spain has almost entirely been restored, with the country’s national grid operator saying 99.16% of mainland power had been brought back on Tuesday morning.
The Portuguese government has confirmed that power has been restored to all of its 6.4 million customers.
All airports in Spain and Portugal are operational, authorities say.
Meanwhile, play at the Madrid Open is set to resume after it was suspended on Monday due to the power cut, which also affected Andorra and parts of France.
The UK has been looking at how to deal with “different kinds of challenges and threats”, the Home Secretary said after the power outage.
Asked whether the power cut had triggered a fear that British infrastructure could be affected in the same way, Yvette Cooper told Sky News that the UK has a “continued approach” to “resilience” and “security issues”.
She added: “We’ve been looking, as part of wider security reviews across the country, how we deal with both resilience and also different kinds of challenges and threats.
“Some of which can be the traditional security challenges, some of which can be the kinds of resilience – things that we’re talking about in Spain and Portugal – and we obviously support them and the governments there in the work that they’re doing.”
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