Six weeks after Spain and Portugal suffered a massive power outage, authorities in Madrid issued an official report Tuesday saying April’s cascading blackout that left tens of millions disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that led to the grid’s failure.
Spain’s Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation’s energy policy, said at a news conference that small grid failures, concentrated in the south of Spain, led to a chain reaction among larger ones.
She completely ruled that the failure was due to a cyberattack.
The April 28 outage started suddenly after 12:30 p.m. in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transit systems, cellular networks, internet connectivity and other critical infrastructures. Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity — or about 60 per cent of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain’s, also went down. Only the countries’ island territories were spared.
“All of this happened in 12 seconds, with most of the power loss happening in just five seconds,” Aagesen said.
Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day.
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The minister said several technical causes that contributed to the event, including “poor planning” by operators of the grid who didn’t find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations. She also said that some smaller substations that operators shut off preventively when the disruptions started could have stayed online to help manage the system.
The government report included analysts from Spain’s national security agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors.
The only solid information made public shortly after the system went down came from Spain’s grid operator Red Eléctrica, which had narrowed down the source of the outage to two separate incidents in southern Spain where substations had failed.
In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power outages and igniting a fierce debate about whether Spain’s high levels of renewable power had something to do with the grid failing.
Spain is at the forefront of Europe’s transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57 per cent of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources like wind, hydropower and solar. The country is also phasing out its nuclear plants.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed back against such speculation and defended renewables. He asked for patience and said that his government would not “deviate a single millimetre” from its energy transition plans, which include a goal of generating 81 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
—Joseph Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain.
© 2025 The Canadian Press