A major power outage hit Spain and Portugal on Monday, including their capitals, knocking out subway networks, phone lines, traffic lights and ATM machines.
The Portuguese Cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the prime minister’s residence, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Red Eléctrica to follow efforts at restoring power to the grid.
The countries have a combined population of over 50 million people. It was not immediately clear how many were affected.
It is rare to have such a widespread outage across the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish generator Red Eléctrica said the incident is being assessed.
Portugal’s government said the outage 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.
Source:AP
