Fury over blackout chaos ‘made worse by race for Net Zero’ as Spain is forced to ask Morocco for extra power while Brit tourists camp out in airports and extra cops drafted in to stop looting

Spain and Portugal were still reeling from chaos and disruption this morning after a huge power outage hit most of the Iberian Peninsula on Monday morning, grounding planes, halting public transport and forcing hospitals to limit procedures.

Spain continued its State of Emergency into Tuesday and brought in thousands of extra police officers to uphold order and prevent looting. The interior ministry said the emergency status would be applied in the regions that request it, amid fears the chaos could last for days.

The cause of Monday’s power outage was unclear. Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez said that the country had lost 15GW of electricity generation in five seconds – equivalent to 60 per cent of national demand.

While one official said Spain has not ruled out a cyber attack, authorities were reluctant to speculate. REN, Portugal’s grid operator, said they believed a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’ was behind the outages.

Energy experts warned that the grids may also have been made less stable by wide adoption of renewable energy – after Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewables for the first time earlier this month.

An opinion piece in Spanish outlet El Español said ‘no one dares to reveal the causes of the total blackout in Spain’, citing a report that warned that integration of renewable energy and falling demand were causing significant fluctuations in voltage levels, that could lead to blackouts.

Spain was forced to draw power from France and Morocco to restore power to the north and south of the country.

‘Welcome to Pedro Sánchez’s third world,’ one Spanish user wrote on X this morning. Another called for a ‘general strike’, blasting the head of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) as a ‘traitor’.

Spain’s Red Eléctrica reported that by 6am local time more than 99 per cent of the country’s electricity supply had been restored – but travel disruption continued after residents and tourists were stuck in stations and airports across the country.

British tourists were forced to camp out at airports overnight with travel disrupted in Spain and Portugal into Tuesday. 

Monday’s blackout hit most of the Iberian peninsula, leaving roads gridlocked and prompting people to clear supermarket shelves. 

The outage caused a frenzy across the Spain, with the interior ministry deploying 30,000 police officers countrywide to maintain security in an evening of darkness. 

Huge queues formed outside shops and banks as residents, with tourists desperately seeking to stockpile essentials and take out cash. 

Rows of cars were pictured lining up at petrol stations as people hoped to fill up their vehicles and fuel cans, with expats detailing how they have tried to power generators to keep their homes going.

Power supply was gradually restored in both countries from late Monday afternoon and early evening though some operations were still not able to resume on Tuesday morning. 

The Madrid underground metro network said it had resumed operating at 8am local time with 80 per cent of trains circulating, but railway infrastructure operator Adif said most trains nationwide were not operating. 

Renfe told commuters in Galicia that all train services were suspended until further notice.

Portugal’s operator said shortly before 8am local time that power supplies were back to normal. But visitors said the country still felt ‘like being back in full lockdown’ after swathes of the country were knocked offline, and supermarkets raided for supplies.

‘Supermarket shelves [are] empty already,’ one told MailOnline. ‘No one seems to be aware of exactly how long this will last, which seems to [have] created panic.’ 

Alicia Hindhaugh, from Northumberland, told BBC News that she had been stuck on a train to Madrid for nearly 24 hours after boarding on Monday.

‘There was a three-week-old baby on board but some local villagers took the family to stay with them overnight,’ she said. 

‘It just felt disgusting overnight as it was so hot. I don’t speak the language and it was pitch black overnight so it did feel a bit scary,’ she added. 

Airports have also been hit by the outages, with flights delayed and cancelled. 

At Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport in Porto, many travellers pitched up for the night after waiting hours for news on their flights.

Airlines had warned travellers of disruption, with one major carrier, TAP, advising flyers not to come to the airport at all.

‘We apologise that this flight has been cancelled,’ became a familiar phrase from the tinny loudspeaker as those crowding around airline check-in staff became more and more destitute.

While some chose to sleep on old clothes or rucksacks, others sought the increasingly diminishing supply of sustenance as they prepared for a long night – delighted to pay up to 10 Euros for a simple ham and cheese sandwich.

Apocalyptic scenes saw suitcase-wielding tourists mill aimlessly around the departure lounge, as if seeking some portal to an aircraft, a MailOnline reporter at the scene observed.

As dawn broke, the queues started to form once again – with travellers leaving as disappointed as they arrived. 

Trains and metro services were shut down in both Spain and Portugal, with people stuck in tunnels and on railway tracks, forcing evacuations. 

A British expat working in Barcelona told MailOnline yesterday evening: ‘It’s absolute chaos. I would say 30 per cent of the lights are working. Most of them are not. 

‘Traffic is crazy. The mopeds and motorbikes are heading down the cycle lanes. There are massive queues to catch the bus because without the metro there’s no way that anybody can get home from work.

‘There is power in some downstairs premises, so it’s not a total blackout. But internet up here doesn’t work at all. There’s also an eerie silence, apart from the cars. But everything is quiet.’

The English teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, added: ‘Nobody knows what is going on. I came up to do classes today and I’ve had to tell every single parent what’s going on because they have literally no idea.

‘Only the very few people who have access to internet, either because of their service or where they are, have been able to find out what’s going on. But so many people’s phones have no connection.’

As of last night, Madrid, Andalusia and Extremadura had asked for the central government to take over public order and other functions.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters on Monday that the cause of the unprecedented power outages remains unknown, as power was restored to about 60 per cent of the country.

Mr Sanchez said in a national address: ‘We do not yet have conclusive information on the reasons for this (power) cut, so I ask the people, as we have done in past crises, to inform themselves through official channels.

‘For the time being, there’s no evidence of any civil protection problems. I repeat, there are no problems of insecurity.’

He reassured Spain’s national security council would meet again to take stock – and called on citizens to avoid travel and use their mobile phones sparingly, describing telecommunications as being at a ‘critical moment’.

The loss triggered a disconnection of the Spanish and French grids, prompting a general collapse of the Spanish system, Red Electrica’s chief of operations Eduardo Prieto told reporters on Monday evening. 

Some areas in France suffered brief outages on Monday. 

Power networks warned yesterday that disruption could last for several days. They blamed ‘extreme temperature variations’ in Spain, causing a ‘strong oscillation’ in the electrical network – although this has raised eyebrows as it was a relatively mild 22C (68F), cooler than parts of the UK. 

Spain has one of the highest proportions of renewable energy – 56 per cent on average – in Europe.

And just days ago on April 16, Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydro power for the first time. 

Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant, said: ‘The more you have wind and solar on the grid, the less stable the grid becomes and so the harder it is to manage faults.

‘I would say there’s a strong chance that the large amount of solar on the system created the conditions for this to be a widespread blackout and made it much worse.’

Traditional generators, like coal and hydroelectric plants or gas turbines, are connected directly to the grid via heavy spinning machines that store inertia, which acts as a shock absorber, protecting against any supply disruption due to changes in electrical frequency.

Ms Porter added: ‘When you are in a low-stability situation, it’s much harder to control what happens. Electrical things don’t like big changes in frequency and shut themselves down. They all start tripping off.

‘So, your grid operator will have been sitting there, trying to react to the changes in frequency, but they can’t do it fast enough. So that causes a cascading grid failure.’

EasyJet confirmed the power blackout was impacting access to some airports and affecting its flight operations in Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona.

‘Like all airlines, we are experiencing some disruption to our flying programme meaning that some return flights from Lisbon and Madrid have been unable to operate,’ EasyJet said in a statement.

It added that despite the chaos, its services at Porto and Faro airports were operating as scheduled.

EasyJet advised passengers to monitor local travel updates and flight trackers for the latest information before they travel. 

A British holidaymaker in Madrid described the situation in the city centre as ‘carnage’, telling MailOnline: ‘People are starting to panic. It’s going to get really bad if they don’t restore power quickly.’

Madrid’s Mayor urged people in the city to stay where they were as the disaster unfolded, while the president of the city’s regional government called for Spain’s prime minister to activate an emergency plan to allow for soldiers to be deployed. 

Power outages gripped Spain at around 12.30 local time, plunging millions into darkness. Spain’s nuclear power plants automatically stopped, but diesel generators were activated to keep them in ‘safe condition’, officials said.

Its nuclear safety council confirmed all seven of the country’s nuclear reactors are safe.

Four of them stopped operating automatically once the power cut hit, but emergency generators immediately kicked in.

The other three reactors were not operating at the time, but emergency generators switched on to keep them in a safe condition, the council added.

British holidaymaker Adrian Coles, who was heading back to the UK after a weekend in Madrid when the blackout hit, told MailOnline that he had struggled to get to the airport.

‘People are fighting over taxis and the streets are mostly at a standstill. Police are at junctions but at some they are just standing and not directing while at others they have whistles and are directing traffic,’ he said.

‘Our taxi driver said he won’t try to go back to the city as he doesn’t think it would be wise. He’s dropped us and he’s going home.’

He said they managed to reach the airport, which was still running on a back-up power supply, but that ‘lots of things are shut down to conserve power’.

‘Landlines appear to be down with hotels struggling with the number of guests asking for help,’ he added. ‘The mobile network failed in the city. Routers are off in the city and with so many people data isn’t working.’ 

He said that with access to the internet down, ‘rumours were spreading’ among locals and visitors.

Portugal’s grid operator said that the disruptions to the country’s power supply were the result of a ‘fault in the Spanish electricity grid,’ which was related to a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’.

It said that extreme temperature variations along the grid had led to ‘anomalous oscillations’ in very high-voltage power lines – an effect known as ‘induced atmospheric variation’ – which leads to power oscillations throughout the grid.

This causes the voltage and frequency of some parts of the grid to get out of sync with the rest of the grid, leading to irregular or excessive power flow to some areas, damaging equipment and triggering widespread power failures.

According to REN, these oscillations lead to ‘successive disturbances across the interconnected European network’ which caused the blackouts.

A director at Spain’s electricity grid operator said just before 3pm local time yesterday that the outage is ‘exceptional and totally extraordinary’ and will take between six and 10 hours to repair. 

Power initially returned to parts of north, south, west of the country, according to grid operators.

The power cuts come just days after Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydro power, for a whole day for the first time on April 16. 

Spanish officials are urgently investigating the cause of the outages and have said they are looking into the possibility of the blackouts being triggered by a devastating cyber attack. 

Videos online show railway networks in Spanish cities plunged into chaos, with people being evacuated through tunnels as blackouts hit underground stations and halted trains.

Maddie Sephton, from London, was on the Madrid Metro when the power outage occurred, told Sky News that she was stuck on a train for 20 minutes before a staff member pried the doors open manually.

‘We got on the train and everything was fine. But then everything went dark,’ she said. Passengers had to climb 15 flights of stairs to get out of the metro.

An ex-pat called Lesley, has lived in Spain for 11 years with her husband, told the BBC that they are concerned about the effects of the outages.

‘We are worried about food, water, cash and petrol in case this goes on for a couple of days,’ she said.

‘My husband is driving around now trying to find a petrol station that’s open to get petrol for the generator so that we can plug in the fridge.’

Parts of France also lost power after the outages in Spain and Portugal, the country’s grid operator confirmed. Further outages have been reported as far as Belgium, according to the latest information.

A fire on the Alaric mountain in the south-west of France which damaged a high-voltage power line has also been identified as a possible cause, Portugal’s national electric company REN said.

Airports were also affected, with emergency generators turned on at Porto and Faro airport, but operations ‘limited’ at Lisbon, according to officials.

Parts of Madrid’s sprawling metro system have been evacuated and traffic lights in the capital have stopped working, posing risk on major carriageways.

The outage is also said to have forced the closure of Barcelona’s tram system and stopped some traffic lights in the city from working. 

Internet and telephone lines across the country are also down. 

Meanwhile play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament.

Spanish oil refiner Petronor said all units at its Bilbao oil refinery were shut down, ‘fully ensuring safety conditions, and all emergency systems are operating correctly,’ the company said.

All of Valencia and Barcelona were left without power, Spain’s entire rail network shut down, internet services stopped working and there was chaos on the streets as traffic built up in Madrid and Lisbon. 

‘A crisis committee has been set up to manage the situation [in Spain]. At this stage there’s no evidence yet regarding the cause of the massive blackout,’ an official briefed on the situation in Spain told Politico.

‘A cyberattack has not been ruled out and investigations are ongoing,’ they added.

Spain’s INCIBE cybersecurity agency is investigating the possibility of the blackout being triggered by a cyber attack.

A spokesman for the European Union Agency for Cyber Security, said in a statement: ‘We are monitoring the whole thing very closely, right now the investigation is still ongoing and whether it is a cyber attack has not been confirmed yet.’

The Spanish government said it is working to ‘identify the origin’ of the blackouts, with officials saying they are still gathering evidence.

Backup generators have meant Spain’s hospitals have been spared the worst of the power outages.

Some have suspended non-emergency surgeries, however emergency power supplies have kept essential equipment such as ventilators and cardiac monitors running.

A British expat living in Barcelona told MailOnline that ‘nobody seems to know what’s going on’ in Spain ‘because nobody has signal’.

The English teacher said he only found out about the European blackout from British reports: ‘I can get signal on my rooftop, but I can’t get signal down below. One floor down I have nothing. 

‘The traffic lights are still working… The underground is not working apparently. Lots of parts of the public transport are not working.’

Spanish railway company Renfe said that all trains have halted and no departures are currently taking place, with a power outage at a ‘national level’. 

Spain’s electricity grid operator Red Eléctrica wrote on X: ‘Plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero that occurred in the peninsular system.

‘The causes are being analyzed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it. We will continue to report.’

Lottie Feist, 23, who lives in Lisbon, told of panic across the Portuguese capital as traffic lights cut out.

The translation student at Nova University said: ‘There is no electricity, nothing is working.

‘We don’t know what’s happening or why we are having a blackout.

‘The roads are absolute carnage as no traffic lights are working. All the power is down, and businesses are being impacted.

‘It’s terrifying, people will be stuck in elevators, and everything has completely shut down.’

In the Spanish city of Valencia, Metrovalencia which runs the city’s urban rail system said on X traffic was ‘disrupted’ due to a ‘general power outage in the city’, adding: ‘The extent and duration of the outage are unknown.’

The Spanish government has gathered for an emergency session and is monitoring the situation as it develops, according to Spanish media. 

It is rare to have such a widespread outage there. Spanish generator Red Eléctrica said it affected the Iberian peninsula and the incident is being assessed.

The countries have a combined population of over 50 million people. It was not immediately clear how many were affected.

France’s power grid operator said the extent of the outage there was limited and that power had been restored. 

‘In France, homes were without power for several minutes in the Basque Country. All power has since been restored,’ it said, referring to the region in France’s extreme southwestern corner on the border with Spain.

Operator RTE said the outage was not caused by a fire in the south of France, contrary to some reports – and that there was ‘no impact on the supply-demand balance’ in France.

According to RTE, the Iberian grid was automatically disconnected from the European grid from 12:38 pm to 1:30 pm (1038 GMT to 1130 GMT).

Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE said a major power outage hit several regions of the country just after midday local time, leaving its newsroom, Spain’s parliament in Madrid and subway stations across the country in the dark.

A graph on Spain’s electricity network website showing demand across the country indicated a steep drop around 12:15 p.m. from 27,500MW to near 15,000MW.

A couple of hours later, Spain’s electricity network operator said it was recovering power in the north and south of the peninsula, which would help to progressively restore the electricity supply nationwide.

In Portugal, a country of some 10.6 million people, the outage hit the capital, Lisbon, and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country.

Portugal’s government said the incident appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told national news agency Lusa.

‘It looks like it was a problem with the distribution network, apparently in Spain. It’s still being ascertained,’ Cabinet Minister Leitão Amaro was quoted as saying.

Portuguese distributor E-Redes said the outage was due to ‘a problem with the European electricity system,’ according to Portuguese newspaper Expresso. 

The company said it was compelled to cut power in specific areas to stabilize the network, according to Expresso.

Several Lisbon subway cars were evacuated, reports said. Also in Portugal, courts stopped work and ATMs and electronic payment systems were affected. Traffic lights in Lisbon stopped working.

It was not possible to make calls on mobile phone networks, though some apps were working.