By 7 a.m., more than 99% of energy demand in Spain had been restored, the country's electricity operator Red Eléctrica said. Portuguese grid operator REN said Tuesday morning all of the 89 power substations were back online since late last night and power had been restored to all 6.4 million customers.
By Tuesday morning, life was returning to normal: schools and offices reopened in Spain, traffic eased along the capital's main arteries and public transport restarted after significant delays.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that the government's priorities were twofold: restoring Spain's electrical system and finding the causes of the blackout so that a similar event “never takes place again.”
Cause remains a mystery
Such widespread electric failure has little precedent on the Iberian Peninsula or in Europe.
Eduardo Prieto, director of services for system operations at Spain's electricity operator, noted two steep, back-to-back “disconnection events” before Monday's blackout. Speaking at a new conference on Tuesday, he said that more investigation was needed to understand why they took place.
Spain’s meteorological agency, AEMET, said that it hadn't detected any “unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomena” on Monday, and no sudden temperature fluctuations were recorded at their weather stations.
Portugal’s National Cybersecurity Center on Monday dismissed speculation about foul play, saying that there was no sign that the outage resulted from a cyberattack.
European Council President António Costa also said that there were “no indications of any cyberattack,” while Teresa Ribera, an executive vice president of the European Commission, also ruled out sabotage. Nonetheless, the outage “is one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times,” she said.
