Spain, Portugal and parts of France have been hit with a major electricity power outage, with reports both Lisbon and Madrid have suffered failures in supply. Spanish generator RedElectrica said on Monday the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Spain and Portugal, had been affected. There are also reports regions in France on the border with Spain have suffered a loss of power.
RedElectrica said it was responding to the incident which affects an area where more than 50 million live. Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE said a major power outage hit several regions of the country at around 12:30pm local time, leaving its newsroom, Spain’s parliament in Madrid and metro stations across the country in the dark. People in neighbourhood WhatsApp chats in Barcelona and outskirts cities and towns also reported the outage. In Portugal, a country of some 10.6 million people, the outage hit the capital Lisbon and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country. There are also reports that the Spanish city of Seville, in Andalusia, has lost its electricity connection.
Spanish radio station Cader Ser Radio said some areas of Madrid’s underground had been evacuated and there were traffic jams in the city centre as traffic lights had stopped working.
Portuguese distributor E-Redes said the outage was due to “a problem with the European electricity system,” according to Portuguese newspaper Expresso.
The company said it was compelled to cut power in specific areas to stabilise the network, according to Expresso. E-Redes said parts of France were also affected.
It was not possible to make calls on mobile phone networks, though some apps were working. Unconfirmed news reports said the Lisbon subway stopped running. Traffic lights in the city center stopped working.
A statement from RedElectrica on X said: “Plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero that occurred in the peninsular system. The causes are being analysed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it. We will continue to report.”
Euronews reports Madrid’s Barajas International Airport has been left without power and that citizens in the tiny nation Andorra, which sits between France and Spain in the Pyrenees, had also had blackouts.
Unconfirmed reports suggest the outage may have spread to as far north as Belgium.
English language news site, the Portugal Resident said outages had reached the southern Algarve region which is favoured by many Brits as a holiday and retirement destination.
