The widespread power outage that disrupted service in Spain and Portugal remains unexplained, even after power was fully restored to the Iberian Peninsula on Tuesday.
Red Eléctrica, Spain’s electricity operator, reported that over 99% of the country’s energy demand was met by 7 a.m. local time. REN, the Portuguese grid operator, stated that all 89 power substations were back online since late the previous night, restoring power to all 6.4 million customers.
“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated in a televised address on Monday night.
Emergency personnel in Spain reported rescuing approximately 35,000 passengers on Monday who were stranded at train stations and in underground tunnels.
Spanish television footage showed evacuations from Madrid metro stations and empty stations with halted trains in Barcelona. Spain’s parliament was also affected by the blackout, according to public broadcaster RTVE.
The ATP Tour announced the suspension of play for the day at the Madrid Open tennis tournament due to the power failure.
In Portugal, several Lisbon subway trains were evacuated, court operations were suspended, and ATMs and electronic payment systems were affected. Traffic lights in Lisbon also ceased functioning during the outage.
REN, the Portuguese grid operator, characterized the incident on Monday as a
“Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high-voltage lines, a phenomenon known as induced atmospheric vibration,” it stated. “These oscillations caused synchronization failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”
However, on Tuesday, Spain’s meteorological agency AEMET, reported that it had detected no “unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomena” on Monday, and its weather stations recorded no sudden temperature changes.
Eduardo Prieto, Red Eléctrica’s chief of operations, stated that the power grid instability caused the Spanish and French electricity interconnection through the Pyrenees mountains to separate, resulting in a failure on the Spanish side, according to . The news agency also reported brief power outages in some parts of France on Monday.
Authorities continued their investigation into the cause of the outage on Tuesday.
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