Spain has suffered another blackout after thousands of people on the Canary Islands were hit with power outages.
Several municipalities on La Palma were reportedly left without electricity for more than two hours on Thursday morning.
More than 30,000 people were affected by the outage, as authorities urged locals to remain calm and avoid overwhelming emergency services.
La Radio Canaria said power went out at 10am, which affected at least 20 towns, and was restored at 12pm.
Fernando González, the island's Energy Minister, said blackouts “cause serious harm, especially to the most vulnerable sectors and to companies whose production is disrupted”.
The blackout was a wake-up call
Spanish investigators and European Union regulators are to investigate the cause of the outage.
But Spain’s ecological transition minister Sara Aegesan confirmed the Los Guinchos power plant malfunctioned.
Kristina Ruby, secretary general at Eurelectric, Europe's electricity industry association, said: "The blackout was a wake-up call.
“It showed that the need to modernise and reinforce Europe’s electricity grid is urgent and unavoidable.”
It came just ten days after a blackout brought mainland Spain and Portugal to a standstill, halted trains and forced hospitals to use backup generators.
The Canary and Balearic islands were not affected by the April blackout
Red Eléctrica, which runs Spain’s electricity grid, has ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the incident.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez added: “I know that Spaniards want to know what happened and they want to know as soon as possible.”
However, the conservative opposition have criticised the socialist PM for failing to give a reason so far to the blackout.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the People’s Party, said: “You were so intent on being the greenest in the world that you have led Spaniards into the dark.”
