A UK expat in Benidorm has revealed the “creepy” reality on the resort’s iconic strip after Spain experienced a massive blackout. Lucy Young, aka The Benidorm Enthusiast, who has lived in the European resort for more than 20 years, explained how Spain and Portugal’s widespread power outages have impacted the popular tourist destination.
On Monday, swathes of Spain and Portugal were struck by huge power outages, including in the capital cities of Madrid and Lisbon. They impacted millions, with internet services, phones, traffic lights, and cash machines not working. Spain’s interior ministry declared a national emergency, with the blackouts grounding planes and halting trains, reports Sky News. Since then, roughly half of Spain’s power has been returned. Meanwhile, Lucy revealed that although power had returned to parts of Spain, as of yesterday (April 28), there were still areas in Benidorm in “complete darkness”.
Speaking from outside Jumping Jacks bar on the Calle Gerona, otherwise known as the Benidorm strip, Lucy confirmed that most of the street lights and traffic lights were operational.
However, some streets, such as the one from which she was reporting, had remained “pretty much powerless”, including the apartment buildings, which were in “darkness”.
Lucy said: “I’m on the strip now. You wouldn’t believe it because it is very strange. It’s very eerie. It’s quite creepy, really. It is kind of taking me back to the Covid days because there’s a lot of bars closed, except this time, there’s people. There’s loads of people everywhere still.”
She added that it had been a “very strange day”, explaining that she was situated at the end of the Calle Gerona, near Old Town, where there was no power.
However, Lucy reported that the other end of the Benidorm strip had electricity and was “party central as normal”, which she described as “quite bizarre”.
The cause of the outages has yet to be determined, but the operator of the Spanish grid has ruled out a cyber attack. In what it described as an initial assessment, it said there was “generation loss” in the Southwest.
It said there were two distinct incidents involving the loss of power, and although the systems were “stable” only minutes prior to the outages, they expanded to the “point of instability.”
Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, said “all the potential causes” were being investigated but urged the public “not to speculate” due to the potential for “misinformation”, reports Al Jazeera.
Sanchez revealed that 15 gigawatts, equating to around 60 percent of the electricity being used, “suddenly disappeared.” Grid operator Red Electrica described the outages as “exceptional and totally extraordinary.”
It was the second large-scale power failure to emerge in Europe in recent months, following the forced closure of Heathrow Airport in March due to a “significant” power failure.