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Spain’s electricity operator had earlier all but ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the outage
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Spain’s High Court will investigate whether a cyberattack may have caused one of Europe’s most severe blackouts which plunged the Iberian peninsula into darkness.
Power has now returned to households in Spain and neighbouring Portugal. Investigators still looking into the cause of the blackout, which remains unclear, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday afternoon.
The investigation comes despite Spain’s grid operator REE all but ruling out a cyberattack in its preliminary assessment of the outage, which prompted travel chaos and left many without water, Wi-Fi or mobile network for hours.
If a cyberattack were found to be behind the blackout, Judge Jorge Calama would investigate it as a crime of terrorism, a court document showed.
Despite power being returned around Spain and Portugal on Tuesday morning, travel chaos continued into its second day with large bustling crowds still in Madrid’s train station.
Around 500 flights were cancelled in total due to the blackout, according to an estimate by The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder.
“What happened yesterday cannot ever happen again,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday afternoon, vowing to hold private operators to account.
Portugal’s prime minister Luis Montenegro and the opposition Socialist Party leader Pedro Nuno Santos both agreed to cancel a scheduled election debate on Monday as a result of the huge blackouts.
Portugal’s next election is due to take place on 18 May, in a snap vote called after Mr Montenegro’s centre-right minority government lost a confidence vote last month.
Emergency workers in Spain said they rescued some 35,000 passengers stranded along railways and underground on Monday after the power cut brought the train network to a standstill.
By 11 pm, there were still 11 trains backed up by the power loss awaiting evacuation, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sïnchez said.
Hundreds of passengers were stranded between tunnels in Madrid and Lisbon after the power outage.
One passenger said “everything was on pause” as he shared the video from a train.
Evan Beckerman, co-founder of an automotive parts retailer, said he was one of those stuck at a train station, sharing a video of the chaotic scenes.
“Total power outage across Spain and Portugal… Currently waiting for a train to Valencia but EVERYTHING on pause… Now we wait,” he wrote.
Some have jumped on the suggestion that Spain’s push to use renewable energy had made an impact. Last year, renewables accounted for 53 per cent of the country’s power generation. Solar photovoltaic (PV) accounted for 59 per cent of Spain’s electricity at the time of the blackout, wind nearly 12 per cent, nuclear almost 11 per cent and combined cycle gas plants 5 per cent, Red Electrica data showed.
In a span of just five minutes, between 12.30pm and 12.35 pm local time on Monday, solar PV generation plunged by more than 50 per cent to 8 gigawatts (GW) from more than 18 GW, the data showed.
The Independent’s climate correspondent Nick Ferris explains:
The EU will begin a thorough investigation of the blackout in Spain and Portugal, EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen has said.
It comes after the Portuguese prime minister called on the EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to perform an independent audit of the outage.
The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder reports:
Tens of thousands of airline passengers were stranded after a sudden power outage across Spain and Portugal. Around 500 flights were cancelled, almost half of them to and from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
Travellers may be entitled to care while they wait – but not, as this was beyond the control of airlines, compensation. But your rights depend on where your flight begins and the airline involved.
For all flights from the UK and EU airports (as well as those in the wider EEA), European air passengers’ rights rules prevail. These were introduced in 2006 and are known as EC261. After Brexit, the UK copied and pasted the same regulations into British law as UK261.
Portugal has requested that an EU agency independently audit the power outage which hit the Iberian peninsula the day before;
Acting prime minister Luis Montenegro said his government has asked for the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to perform an independent audit of the outage.
“We want a full investigation of the outage’s causes. We need quick, urgent answers,” Montenegro told a news briefing.
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