A huge power outage has plunged swathes of Spain, Portugal and parts of France into chaos today, knocking out electricity, internet and phone lines across major cities.
Spain’s national rail operator Renfe confirmed the country’s “entire National Electricity Grid was cut off” at 12:30 local time (11:30 BST). All trains were halted with no departures from any station.
Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica said it was investigating the cause and “all resources are being dedicated to solving it” in a post on X.
E-Redes, a Spanish electricity grid monitoring firm, described the blackout as “a wider European problem” and said work was underway to reconnect regions in phases.
Cities including Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon have been badly affected. Madrid’s metro has been evacuated, traffic lights are down causing huge jams and reports from the ground describe chaos at underground stations and massive queues on platforms.
Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended after power cuts disabled scoreboards and cameras. British player Jacob Fearnley was among those forced off court.
In Barcelona, tram services have ground to a halt and critical infrastructure including traffic lights has failed across the city. Internet and telephone outages have also been reported widely across Spain and Portugal.
The situation is developing rapidly, with emergency services on alert and engineers scrambling to restore power.
Officials have yet to confirm the precise cause of the outage but stress that all efforts are being made to bring systems back online as quickly as possible.
Updates to follow….
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