30.04.2025 – (04:30 PM) Htate

Power has been restored in Spain and Portugal after a major blackout that hit the Iberian Peninsula, leaving passengers stranded on trains, hundreds of people trapped in elevators, millions without phone calls and internet access, authorities said.

Electricity company REE said power had been restored to more than 90 percent of mainland Spain by early April 29.

Only a remote area on the Iberian Peninsula, home to nearly 60 million people in both countries, was spared from the blackout.

The exact cause of the blackout is not yet known. However, there are rumors that it was a cyberattack.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luiz Inácio Montenegro said the source of the blackout appeared to be in Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said all possible causes were being investigated. He warned the public not to spread rumors due to the risk of misinformation.

Sanchez said that 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the electricity used at the time of the outage, were suddenly lost for five seconds.

Sanchez said it was not possible to say when full power would be restored in Spain, and some workers would have to stay home on April 29. He said that power in Portugal would be restored within hours.

Electricity was restored to 6.2 million of Portugal’s 6.5 million households by evening, according to a statement from the national electricity company.

The blackout was brief in southwestern France and disrupted some internet services and airport security in Morocco.

“People were shocked,” said Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker. This is a man who left a Madrid metro station in distress.

“This has never happened in Spain,” he said.

“I can’t make phone calls. I can’t call my family and my parents. I can’t call anything. I can’t even go to work,” he told AFP.

In Madrid and cities across Spain and Portugal, panicked people rushed to withdraw money from banks and crowds of people filled the streets without phone service. There were huge queues of taxis and buses.

With traffic lights out, police struggled to clear the dense traffic. Authorities urged drivers to stay home.