Yesterday again showed us how fragile our magnificent civilization is and how dependent we still are on the outside world. The massive power outages that began yesterday around midday throughout Spain spread to Portugal and partly to France, affecting over 50 million people in one way or another.
The consequences of this situation have not yet been finally resolved, and thousands of people across the Iberian Peninsula still have to live without electricity—and, therefore, almost without all the achievements of modern civilization. The ‘Long Night’ descended on Spain and Portugal, inevitably bringing mess and chaos with it.
Spain and Portugal faced massive power outages around midday on April 28, resulting in a complete blackout in both countries
Apparently, this was caused by some extreme fluctuations in air temperature, which affected the unified energy system
Around midday on April 28, massive power outages began across Spain and Portugal, causing the failure of a large number of services. Trains stopped all over the peninsula, and people found themselves blocked in subway cars—after all, the doors opened with electricity. Traffic lights went out at intersections, and mobile communications and the Internet went out almost instantly.
According to some experts, the problem occurred due to voltage surges in the network and extreme fluctuations in air temperature. There were so-called ‘induced atmospheric variations,’ which resulted in synchronization failures between the elements of the unified energy system of Spain and Portugal. As a result, there were massive power outages in both countries.
All the Spanish nuclear power plants also lost external power, so the staff had to use diesel generators
Whether this is true remains to be seen and investigated. The most important thing is to deal with the problems here and now because these problems really look threatening. For example, due to a blackout, the external power supply to all Spanish nuclear power plants ceased, and the power units had to be stopped in emergency mode.
However, there will definitely not be a major accident – now all power units have switched to backup power from diesel generators, and there is no need to worry about the cooling of the nuclear reactors. After all, similar – and much more serious problems have occurred over the past few years at some Ukrainian nuclear power plants after massive multi-day blackouts, and there, too, everything, fortunately, turned out well.
So, European nuclear energy specialists have experience in dealing with such cases. However, the situation is gradually improving across the peninsula, and electricity is returning to homes. Although the photos of empty supermarket shelves, people sleeping in blocked train cars, and empty, dark stands at the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament, which is currently taking place in the Spanish capital, are still impressive.
Many people actually panicked – especially after realizing the scale of power outages
On the other hand, many people panicked – but not everyone. “It was very unusual, especially when you understand the scale,” says Catherine, a Barcelona resident with whom Bored Panda got in touch for a comment. “At first we thought that the power was only out on our street, then – that it was in the entire area… It only became scary when we found out that there were outages throughout Spain, and even in France too.”
“However, now almost the entire city has electricity back. In some areas, they turned it on at night, and in some… for example, I live near the airport, so we got the light before everyone else,” says Catherine. By the way, as of today, all substations in Spain have resumed their work, and in Portugal, according to the local network operator REN, all 89 substations are also already working.
The Internet traffic also fell critically in both countries, as well as mobile network
Of course, the blackout severely affected ordinary people’s daily routines. For example, in both countries, Internet traffic fell critically—by 80% in Spain and by as much as 90% in Portugal.
This also applies to mobile traffic—after all, even if mobile network towers remain with an autonomous power supply, when landline Internet is disconnected, people massively switch to mobile networks, and due to a sharp increase in load, they gradually reduce the speed and quality of coverage.
However, the larger the population of the city, the more chaos actually occurs on the streets. In some small towns, people took the blackout much more calmly. Maria Senopalnikova lives in Torrevieja, a resort town with less than 100K people on the Mediterranean coast. “Everyone was scared at first, of course – but then we realized that nothing truly catastrophic was happening,” Maria tells Bored Panda.
“So we all went to the bars by the sea to drink beer – while it was still cold! We had electricity back at seven in the evening, and some good mobile networks appeared by this morning. However, in some areas, there is still no power,” Maria tells us. “But we, of course, strongly believe that everything will be fine soon.”
By present-day the electricity is gradually coming back everywhere
Some netizens also say that it was scary in any case – for example, someone’s friend got stuck in the elevator, and someone got stuck in the subway. Even now, as some commenters pointed out, there is still no electricity in some areas of Spain and Portugal. So critical infrastructure enterprises have to operate from diesel generators. It cannot be said that this is very good for the environment, but what else could be done?
The good news is that many people, despite the problems, don’t lose their sense of humor. Someone joked that now they understood why three friends abruptly left the online battle in League of Legends. Someone was sad that they had to eat without their usual YouTube videos, and someone working remotely was just happy that they got an unscheduled day off. Life goes on, and we live in spite of all our troubles.
Netizens from both countries said that it was really scary, but many of them still are prone to joking
