Spain-Portugal power outage: Blackout could last up to a week

On Monday, widespread blackouts hit Spain, Portugal and some parts of France leaving millions without electricity and internet, causing severe flight and transport delays for travellers. 

The Spanish and Portuguese governments met to discuss the outage and a crisis committee was set up in Spain. 

Initially, officials could not rule out a possible cyber attack, but Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has since come out saying there is ‘no indication’ that a cyber attack is behind the power cut.

Speaking to journalists, he says the cause of the power cut is still unknown but it is now clear that it 'did not originate in Portugal'.

According to Portuguese grid operator REN, a 'rare atmospheric phenomenon' from extreme temperature variations in Spain is behind the blackout and given the complexity of the issue, it could take up to a week to fully normalise the network.

Meanwhile, Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica says power has already been restored to parts of Spain’s North, South and West and a gradual restore of power will happen over the coming hours.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament’s been suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards powered down along with camera equipment. 

Parts of Madrid underground had to be evacuated due to the outage and road traffic slowed to a crawl with some traffic signals inoperable. 

Spain’s public transport network Metrovalencia confirmed the disruptions affected the entire network and the extent and duration of the outage are unknown.