Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said “everything possible is being done” overnight to restore power to all parts of the country following an unprecedented regional blackout that left tens of millions of people across the Iberian peninsular without power.
Speaking late on Monday night, Sánchez said the idea was to get the power back on across Spain on Tuesday, adding that 50% of the national electricity supply had been restored in the past few hours.
The blackout – blamed by the Portuguese operator on extreme temperature variations – left the two countries without trains, metros, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access.
People were trapped in lifts, stuck on trains, stalled in traffic and abandoned in airports. Hundreds stumbled along pitch-black metro tunnels using their phone torches; others scrambled for basics in supermarkets that could only take cash, or began long trudges home from work.
Mobile networks went down and internet access was cut as power failed at 12.33pm (11.33 BST). Hospitals postponed routine operations but used generators to attend to critical cases, and while electronic banking was able to function on backup systems, most ATM screens were blank.
Related: Spain and Portugal power outage: what caused it, and was there a cyber-attack?
In scenes reminiscent of the 2003 outage that caused widespread blackouts in the US north-east, rail services across the Iberian peninsula were halted, air traffic disrupted and traffic lights extinguished. Hundreds of people had to be rescued from jammed lifts.
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martinez-Almeida, urged people to minimise their journeys and stay where they were, adding: “It is essential that the emergency services can circulate.” Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended.
Sánchez said it was still too early to know what had caused the cut, but that nothing was being ruled out.
“Just how long it will take to get back to normal is something that [the national grid operator] Red Eléctrica still can’t say for sure,” he said. “There has never been a drop to zero in the system before and the idea now is to keep on with the progressive and prudent restoration of the supply to avoid any setbacks over the coming hours.”
By 10pm local time on Monday, 62% of Spain’s substations were back online (421 of 680) and 43.3% of the power demand had been met, while Portugal’s grid operator REN said it had restored power to 85 of the country’s 89 substations.
Red Eléctrica had previously cautioned that it could take between six and 10 hours to fully restore supply after what it called an “exceptional and totally extraordinary” incident.
Along a major thoroughfare in Madrid’s Argüelles neighbourhood, the restoration of the power supply prompted whoops of delight and a round of hearty applause among the many people wandering the street.
Sánchez said that the power cut originated at 12.33pm, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used – suddenly disappeared.
“That’s something that has never happened before,” he added. “What prompted this sudden disappearance of the supply is something that the experts still haven’t been able to determine. But they will … All potential causes are being analysed and no hypothesis or possibility is being ruled out.”
The Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
REN said the phenomenon, known as “induced atmospheric vibration”, caused “synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network”.
Widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003, a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused blackouts for about 12 hours, and in 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Sánchez thanked France and Morocco for sending additional electricity to Spain, and said the current shortfall would be eased using gas and hydroelectric power.
The prime minister said additional national police and Guardia Civil officers had been deployed across the country to ensure people’s safety overnight, adding that hospitals were functioning well thanks to the efforts of healthcare workers.
He said telecommunications services were still suffering interruptions, mainly because of a lack of electricity supply to antennae.
Sánchez said that only 344 of the 6,000 flights in Spain on Monday had been cancelled, and that the country’s roads network was working well, barring some tailbacks.
The main travel disruption had occurred on the rail network, where 35,000 passengers trapped on more than 100 trains had been helped by rail companies and the military emergencies unit. Eleven more trains that had stopped in remote areas were still waiting to be reached.
In Madrid and other cities, traffic lights ceased to function, causing gridlock as vehicles slowed to avoid collisions, while metros were halted. Spain’s national road authority, DGT, urged motorists to avoid using the roads as much as possible.
El País newspaper posted photos and video on its website of passengers navigating darkened metro tunnels in the Spanish capital and police directing traffic on the city’s streets. Footage also showed its own reporters working by torchlight.
The Spanish health ministry said in a social media update it was in contact with regional authorities to assess the scope of the widespread blackout but reassured the public that hospitals had supplementary systems in place.
In Portugal, the outage hit the capital, Lisbon, and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country. Lisbon metro carriages were evacuated and ATMs and electronic payment systems cut out.
The Portuguese water supplier EPAL said water supplies could be disrupted, prompting queues to form at stores as people rushed to buy bottled water and other emergency supplies such as gas lights, generators and battery-powered radios.
Sánchez said that eight of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions – Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia and Valencia – had declared level 3 emergencies, placing responsibility for the response in the hands of the central government. He said schools in those areas would be open on Tuesday, but would not be offering regular classes.
He said the situation across the country remained very “asymmetric” on Monday night, with some regions already having 90% of their power restored, while others had recovered less than 15%.
Sánchez also advised non-essential workers to stay home on Tuesday if necessary.
“It’s going to be a long night,” he said. “But we’re going to keep working to get back to normal as quickly as possible.”
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