Spain’s top criminal court has said it was investigating whether the huge blackout that paralysed the Iberian Peninsula yesterday was “an act of computer sabotage on critical infrastructure”.
Although the causes are unknown, “cyberterrorism is among” the potential explanations, while the “critical situation” generated for the population meant an investigation was necessary, the Audiencia Nacional said in a statement.
Earlier Spanish electricity grid operator REE and Portugal’s government both ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the massive power outage that hit most of Spain and Portugal yesterday.
Spain’s REE’s System Operations Chief Eduardo Prieto told a news briefing the electricity system was now stable and working normally.
Portugal government spokesman Antonio Leitao Amaro said: “In Portugal, we have no information related to a cyberattack or a hostile act at this stage.
“There would seem to have been an issue in the power transmission network” in Spain.
The huge outage brought most of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport, and forcing hospitals to suspend routine operations.
Portugal’s grid operator REN said that all its power sub-stations were back “on stream” before midnight last night.
The Portuguese government said trains are back working and “all 6.4 million electricity clients”, have had their supply “normalised”.
At the height of the outage Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a national emergency, deploying 30,000 police across the country to keep order as governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings.
The cause was unclear, with Portugal suggesting the issue originated in Spain and Spain pointing the finger at a break-up in its connection to France.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said there was “no indication” a cyberattack had caused the blackout, which began at around 12.30pm local time yesterday.
Nonetheless, rumours circulated of possible sabotage, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he had spoken to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Mr Sanchez said that the country had suffered a loss of 15GW of electricity generation in five seconds, equivalent to 60% of national demand. Technicians were working to figure out why that sudden drop occurred, he said.
“This is something that has never happened before,” the Spanish Prime Minister added.
REN board member Joao Conceicao, told reporters the company had not ruled out the possibility of a “very large oscillation in electrical voltage, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system”.
“There could be a thousand and one causes, it’s premature to assess the cause,” he said.
Spain’s grid operator REE blamed a connection failure with France for triggering a knock-on effect.
“The extent of the loss of power was beyond what European systems are designed to handle and caused a disconnection of the Spanish and French grids, which in turn led to the collapse of the Spanish electric system,” Eduardo Prieto said.
Earlier, parts of France suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.
In Spain, power started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas in the early afternoon, and to parts of capital Madrid last night.
The blackout had wide-ranging effects across the peninsula.
Hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia in Spain suspended all routine medical work but still attended to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down, and some retailers closed, including grocery chain Lidl and furniture giant IKEA.
Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country and the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, while trains were cancelled in both countries.
Prime Minister Sanchez said yesterday evening that about 35,000 train passengers had been rescued from trains while 11 trains still remained stranded in remote areas.
Images from a Madrid supermarket showed long queues at tills and empty shelves as people rushed to stock up on staples, while play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended.
The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning “adequately” on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.
There were traffic jams in Madrid city centre as traffic lights stopped working, with people in reflective vests appointing themselves to direct vehicles at intersections. Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and lifts.
Many Spaniards decided to take a half-day off, congregating in streets and plazas for impromptu get-togethers or cooking meals by candlelight at home.
Internet traffic plummeted by 90% in Portugal and 80% in Spain compared to previous-week levels, according to Cloudflare Radar, which monitors global internet traffic.
Power outages of such a magnitude are rarely seen in Europe.
In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.
In 2006, an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of Europe and as far as Morocco.
About 43% of Spain’s energy comes from wind and solar power, with nuclear accounting for a further 20% and fossil fuels 23%, according to energy think tank Ember.
Remote regions of Greenland lost access to key satellite services including internet and telephones, the Arctic island’s telecoms group said, adding it would investigate whether this was related to the power blackout in Spain.
Greenland’s Tusass telecoms company said in a statement it had lost connection to satellite equipment based in Spain that provides telephone, internet, TV and radio services.
The affected places were remote settlements. It was not immediately clear how many people were being affected.
