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Spain’s Power Outage – the blackout of the century

April 29, 2025

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Spain’s Power Outage – On April 28, 2025, a major power outage affected the whole of Spain, Portugal, Andorra and parts of France. It was the biggest blackout ever in Spain, and affected phone, internet and water supplies as well – not mention the transportation systems.

The beginning of Spain’s power outage: pick your villain

It started out of nowhere around 12:30; I got aware of it when Hubby came to ask “what did you do that blew a fuse”. I got a bit offended, but after noticing nothing was burnt in our place, we decided to go to the nearby commerce to check if it was only our place or elsewhere. Day-time blackouts are much harder to see from the window than nighttime ones…

As we were in our nearby convenience shop, lots of neighbors arrived with the same intention, while some others were coming in with news: Torremolinos is out of power, too; Malaga airport as well; Madrid! Portugal, France… it was a bit scary at that point. People wondered if it was Putin or Trump – pick you villain, one neighbor was saying; I thought (hoped) it was a solar flare – better than a world war.

No phones, no internet, no water…

Then the phones started dying – they were charged but couldn’t make calls; internet was slow and slower, if available. People in the shop started noticing their phones stopping working, while others still had internet – until they didn’t.

Back home, no water – pumps are electrical, after all. Plans for lunch ranged from bananas to cold soup from yesterday – but watch out; don’t open the fridge too long, we must preserve the cold as long as possible… We don’t know if this power outage will last for a few hours or a few weeks. We don’t know what could cause such extensive impairment; we don’t know what is going on – are we at war?

It was a mix of panic, try not to panic, and focus on immediate plans: if it lasts more than a few hours, we should move the ice from the freezer to the fridge. Shouldn’t our solar panels be providing some power? No, Hubby said; the microinverters need power from the grid in order to convert DC to AC – if our system had batteries, maybe. We gotta buy batteries. We should have bought water. We gotta eat all the ice cream (not everything is bad in a power outage). Will Kiddo go to school tomorrow? Should we go pick Kiddo early? Damn, the school can’t call us, and we can’t call them…

What the heck is going on, after all? A few tries and, eventually, one piece of news came through the internet: it was indeed something general – Spain, Portugal, the south of France, Andorra – but no info yet about what caused it. Not sure about how to proceed during a solar flare, I was adding layers and layers of sunscreen to my skin, just in case, and trying to do the same for Hubby, that was refusing, as usual (why men hate sunscreen?).

Remarkably, none of us remembered we could have gone to the car to listen to the radio; this could have brought in the news faster than trying the internet, and some relief along with it. Next time, radio.

End of the World, Day 1

Then Kiddo arrived home. He was noticeably scared. He said that in school, also, nobody knew what caused the power outage, but it was going on “in the whole of Europe”. He said his teacher left the room for a moment trying to check what was going on (who blew the fuse, kinda), and a colleague of his used the opportunity to write “End of the World, Day 1” on the blackboard. The teacher came back and saw it; the kid erased the sentence and drew a watermelon (?! because kids).

We had a talk. A lot more about solar flares than about World Wars, though some plans were being made for this scenario, too. Kiddo’s main fear was that supermarkets would run out of food; he got a bit calmer when we explained that, in the initial days of a catastrophic power outage (if that turned out to be the case), there’s plenty of food available, because much of the food is perishable. Somehow, this got him calmer (not me). He also worried about our plants in the terrace, some of which just started regrowing as spring kicks in, that could face a drought if water didn’t come back.

Out and about

After lunch – rice from yesterday heated on the gas-powered barbecue, with sausages for the meat eaters, salad and cheese slices – we had nothing to do. The fear of boredom was striking Kiddo and Hubby the most; I was planning a looooong session of meditation and was actually ok. Hubby went for a siesta; I went for meditation; Kiddo came to me with a board game – plans changed.

We played a bit and decided to go for a walk – Kiddo’s idea; I liked it, but suggested a bus ride – after all, we don’t know when we would manage to take a shower!!! The more we contemplated the possibility of a long power outage, the more we perceived new dimensions to the challenge.

Out and about in Benalmadena, we went on bus 103 from Arroyo all the way to the final stop on Torremuelle. The bus was quite empty all the way. Around the city, nothing very unusual seemed to be going on. The only differences were: 1) there were more people than usual on the streets, for sure – probably because not many people can work without power anyway; 2) many of them carried supermarket bags (later, I read a news saying that there was a run for the supermarkets during the outage, pretty much covid-style).

Big cities, big problems

The situation was much worse elsewhere. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Malaga, among others, were struggling particularly with transportation. If there is one piece of good news that came from this situation was that Spanish hospitals were holding up greatly – they have their own generators, no death has been reported related to the blackout. Surgeries happened as scheduled, just some non-emergency consultations were postponed – quite reassuring news.

Trains and metros, though… all stopped around the country at the same time. The local trains could let people go out somewhere around the city, but even so, imagine the horror of being trapped in a tunnel underground in a local train line, completely in the dark; imagine those in that situation that don’t speak Spanish!

I bet local employees managed to help people out of the trains, as in a situation like this, even asking for help is quite difficult – no phone, no internet… I hope they have radio communication. People then went on trying to take buses, which in turn caused enormous lines at bus stops. Others used their cars, but remember, no traffic lights were working. There were major traffic jams all around; moving around a big city was pure chaos.

People catching a bus in Barcelona during the blackout. Source.

Worse than that was what happened to long-distance trains. Vast parts of Spain are uninhabited; trains stopped in the middle of nowhere, no town in sight. The army was mobilized in several areas to rescue the stranded passengers, but this process takes time – 12 hours after the blackout started, there were still people in some of those trains, without water or food. Some also had nowhere to go, as they were moving initially towards an airport to catch a flight that had since been cancelled.

Train stations became the go-to place for those not being able to reach their destination. Makeshift beds and food distributions were improvised in such places, while everywhere people waited for news – what happened? How long till it ends?

Atocha during the blackout — Madrid’s main train station (Atocha) during the blackout. Source.

Another layer of the power outage challenge, this one perhaps less foreseeable, was the surge of travelers trying to exchange money. You see, as nobody could use their bank cards nor go to an ATM, Euro bills were king; those that didn’t have Euro bills could not pay for food or for a taxi, perhaps not even afford a bus ride, and Uber was impossible without internet anyways. Many of them tried to go to money exchange bureaus, some of which kept on working for a while thanks to generators. There were crowds in front of these places.

Tourists from the EU probably had euros; I guess most of those going to the exchange were British, as I heard news that there were some half a million British tourists in Spain during the blackout – a population comparable to that of Malaga!

Solidarity

If you need a reason to believe in humankind, watch the solidarity that exists among people caught in a catastrophe. We had the opportunity to see it in two places: first, in the nearby shop, where people that still could make phone calls were letting strangers use their phones to make their own important calls; the second was in Matilda a café in Torremuelle.

Above: Matilda Café and, on the right, the final stop of bus line 103 in Torremuelle, Benalmadena.

While in Torremuelle, Kiddo and I tried to go to Matilda Café – after I checked that I had cash – but we were kindly informed that they were closed due to the situation. Despite of that, the waiter (owner?), that was still inside, said that if we wanted to use the bathroom, we could – a really very generous offer in a situation when so many people didn’t have water in their places, and perhaps the café itself was running out of it.

Let there be light

From Torremuelle, for our next bus ride, Kiddo suggested a stop in La Paloma. Good call! So, to the park we went. We saw the ducks and walked around, precisely like two people that have no power or water back home, and therefore nothing to do. It was such a lovely day. Kiddo told me plenty of his stories and we talked more today than we do usually in a week.

La Paloma park in Benalmadena (during Spain's power outage). — La Paloma in spring (and during the blackout!)

While at the park we played our usual observation game, that consists in noticing things around us and showing them to the other; points are assigned according to the uniqueness of the find. We saw a bird trying to carry a large piece of bread – 1 point for Kiddo; I spotted 5 turtles in the pond – 5 points for me; and so we continued walking and playing until… Kiddo saw a fridge with lights on in a café; he scored 100 points, won the game by a landslide and we celebrated that Benalmadena had power again!

This was around 6:30 pm. Power came back in steps, first to some regions of Benalmadena than to others – La Paloma had power before Arroyo de la Miel; little did we know that, while we celebrated, our home was still in the dark. A similar situation happened throughout Spain, with the power coming back in steps, in some areas not for many hours more.

Back home

We stayed a bit more in the park but soon went home, back to “normal”. Power was already back on when we arrived; water had come back but was lacking again; the same for the internet, that worked normally for a while and then nothing at all – worse than during the blackout, when sometimes something did come through; phone lines worked, but the calls were bad, full of lags. Having power back was certainly an improvement, but it clearly wasn’t over yet.

We only had power back because Spain is connected to the French and Moroccan grids – solidarity here too, you see? – Portugal is not connected and therefore, faced a much longer and pervasive blackout. Up to when I went to bed, the situation didn’t improve much at my place, but the news on the TV said Spain’s grid was slowly coming back, so it was expected that in a few hours everything should be normal again.

Next morning, we heard the water coming back into the pipes as we woke up. Checking my phone, not only did the internet work, but there was a message from the school saying that they would receive the kids, but that there would be no classes. Kiddo went to school happier than ever.

What caused the blackout in Spain?

And what caused it, after all? Well, not a world war – relief – and not a solar flare either. News are still scarce and contradictory. For some time, the prevailing explanation was an “unusual weather phenomenon”. This has been rebuffed now; authorities are talking mostly about a failure in the grid due to outdated equipment, but also pointing out that it is too early to have definitive answers, as the investigations just started. Some of them have already said that up to now nothing points at a foreign attack, which is a relief, though this possibility is not completely out yet. I hope the next days will bring more clarity to the matter – pun intended.