Spain-Portugal power outage live: Cyberattack being investigated as possible blackout cause by Madrid court

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.

Telephone and internet services have been restored to remote communities in Greenland after the were cut off following the Spain blackout.

The remote areas suffered issues after crucial satellite access was cut out in far-away Spain, the Arctic island’s state-owned telecoms group Tusass said on Tuesday.

Tusass said it had lost connection to satellite equipment based in Spain that provides telephone, internet, TV and radio services.

“It’s because of an error some 3,000 km (1,900 miles) away,” a Tusass spokesperson told Reuters, adding that connection had been restored overnight.

In 2023, Tusass selected the Maspalomas ground station in Spain’s Gran Canaria island off the west coast of Africa as the hub for its new satellite network which provides a critical lifeline for some of Greenland’s most isolated communities.

Spain’s High Court will investigate the possibility that a cyberattack was behind the huge blackout across nearly the entire Iberian peninsula.

It comes despite claims by the country’s electric grid operator REE that a cyberattack was not the cause of the power outages, according to its early assessment.

If that were the case, Judge Jorge Calama would investigate it as a crime of terrorism, a court document showed.

Alex Lopez was one of dozens of people waiting in a long line at the ATM inside Hospital Clínic, a medical centres in Barcelona.

“Hospitals are one of the few places where the power grid is still working, and we want to get cash just in case,” Mr Lopez said. “I had a doctor’s appointment, so we took advantage of it.”

The lights were still working in the building, with generators keeping the power flowing. People gathered at the doors to use the hospital’s open Wi-Fi network, with chaos unfolding outside after the power went out around midday. The metro stopped running, 600 people had to be rescued from lifts across the region of Catalonia and traffic lights stopped working. Cars were also unable to fill up with petrol, with pumps down or payments not being able to go through.