Spain-Portugal power outage live: Cyberattack being investigated as possible blackout cause by Madrid court

Telephone and internet services have been restored to remote communities in Greenland after the were cut off following the Spain blackout.

The remote areas suffered issues after crucial satellite access was cut out in far-away Spain, the Arctic island’s state-owned telecoms group Tusass said on Tuesday.

Tusass said it had lost connection to satellite equipment based in Spain that provides telephone, internet, TV and radio services.

«It’s because of an error some 3,000 km (1,900 miles) away,» a Tusass spokesperson told Reuters, adding that connection had been restored overnight.

In 2023, Tusass selected the Maspalomas ground station in Spain’s Gran Canaria island off the west coast of Africa as the hub for its new satellite network which provides a critical lifeline for some of Greenland’s most isolated communities.

The UK has been looking at how to deal with “different kinds of challenges and threats”, the home secretary has said, after the major power outage in Spain and Portugal.

Asked whether the power cut there had triggered a fear that British infrastructure could be affected in the same way, Yvette Cooper told Sky News that the UK has a “continued approach” to “resilience” and “security issues”.

She added: “We’ve been looking, as part of wider security reviews across the country, how we deal with both resilience and also different kinds of challenges and threats.

“Some of which can be the traditional security challenges, some of which can be the kinds of resilience – things that we’re talking about in Spain and Portugal – and we obviously support them and the governments there in the work that they’re doing.”

The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder reports:

After the power outage around noon on Monday 28 April hobbled airports, airlines and air-traffic control systems in Spain and Portugal, the final flight cancellation count has just been announced by aviation analysts Cirium.

Passengers travelling to, from and within Spain encountered 413 cancellations, while the score for Portugal is 372. But because many of those are links between the two countries, and are therefore “double counted,” The Independent believes the true total is around 500 – affecting an estimated 80,000 passengers.

The worst affected airport was Lisbon, with 45 per cent of departures grounded. Next was Seville, where one-third of departing flights were cancelled. In absolute terms, though, Madrid and Barcelona were the Spanish cities with the highest number of cancellations – around 50 at each.

The Independent’s assistant editor Vicki Harper speaks with Lisbon residents following yesterday’s blackouts:

Raquel, 48 said: «People were going completely crazy, but you know when the power came on at 11pm, I didn’t even feel like looking at my phone. I know there would be a flood of messages. I quite liked the relaxing quiet for a change.”

Lara and Miguel also live in downtown Rio de Mouro: “From now on we definitely will be getting together a basic survival kit.”

More is through from Spanish electricity grid operator REE, which we earlier reported had ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack in its early assessments.

The electricity system was hit by a dramatic power generation loss in southwestern Spain, that caused instability in the system that led to its disconnection from the French grid.

Systems recovered from the first disconnection, but the second one triggered power cuts across Spain and Portugal.

That’s according to the company’s system operations chief Eduardo Prieto, who said quite possible that the affected generation was solar, but it was to early to say for sure.

Mr Prieto said the system was now stable and working normally.

Here’s all we have learnt from Tuesday about yesterday’s blackout, as the resulting chaos continues:

• The cause of the widespread blackout at 12:33pm yesterday is still unclear. But authorities have ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack and of an electricity surge caused by renewable sources.
• The electric grid suffered two ‘disconnection events’, causing instability in the system. The system recovered from the first event, but the second caused a widespread blackout, said the systems chief of Spain’s electricity grid operator REE.
• The Spanish government has vowed to hold private companies to account if they were at fault for the blackouts. Prime minister Pedro Sanchez said such an event “cannot ever happen again”.
• Around 500 planes were cancelled due to the blackout, according to an estimate by The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder based on official figures.
• Oil refineries have began operating again and life is slowly returning to normal after the power cuts, but the chaos is continuing.

The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder writes:

After the power outage around noon on Monday 28 April hobbled airports, airlines and air-traffic control systems, the final flight cancellation count has just been announced by aviation analysts Cirium.

Passengers travelling to, from and within Spain encountered 413 cancellations, while the score for Portugal is 372. But because many of those are links between the two countries, and are therefore “double counted,” The Independent believes the true total is around 500 – affecting an estimated 80,000 passengers.

The worst affected airport was Lisbon, with 45 per cent of departures grounded. Next was Seville, where one-third of departing flights were cancelled. In absolute terms, though, Madrid and Barcelona were the Spanish cities with the highest number of cancellations – around 50 at each.

Cirium says that 25 flights from the UK to Portugal were cancelled, along with 11 outbound flights to Spain. The same number of inbound services were affected. In total, upwards of 4,000 passengers trying to get to or from Great Britain had their flights grounded. Northern Ireland’s airports suffered no cancellations.