On April 28th, 2025, there was a complete power cut across Spain and Portugal that lasted most of the day. There was no electricity, no phone service and no internet. Nobody knew what happened or how long it was going to last. This is how I experienced it.
I had a late one the night before, and I wasn’t working that day, so I woke up around midday. I made a coffee and looked at the news. The only headline that caught my attention was this one. Suddenly, the power went out. My building is an old one so the fuses blowing out isn’t a rare occurrence. Normally I open the fuse box, flip them down then back up and the power comes back on. Not so this time. I thought I might as well go ahead and do some chores that don’t need electricity. I dressed up and went down to get a particular type of nail that I need for a project at a hardware store around the block. That’s when I noticed it wasn’t just my building which had lost power, but the whole block/area. Every shop had some people standing outside, not knowing quite what to do. They were also surrounded by piles of trash bags, as garbage men have been on strike across the city for about a week. Quite a sight.
I noticed I didn’t have phone reception of any kind. I joked around with the hardware store lady about the apocalyptic look of the street. Without thinking, I spent 1 of the 3 whole euros I had in cash in my wallet… on a box of nails. I just assumed whatever it was would probably be fixed within the hour. I turned the corner to make the long way around the block and see what was going on. I saw many people trying and failing to make calls, a larger than average group of people waiting at the bus stop, and I heard police sirens in the distance. I went to cross the road and… the stoplight wasn’t on. No stoplights were on, anywhere around. The cars and people were just crossing whenever they could. I hadn’t seen that since Myanmar, and this wasn’t Myanmar, I didn’t trust the sickos in this town not to drive me over. But I had to see what was going on. I went home, took my camera, and walked back out, towards the centre.
I noticed more people were coming out onto the streets. The high school and other teaching centres had let the students out early. Policemen were manually directing the traffic in the roundabouts. This was big. The blaring sirens of ambulances, firefighters and police cars were near constant. I half expected to find a large, multi-vehicle collision around the next corner, but there wasn’t. I thought: “Whatever you do, make sure you don’t get hurt, now would be a bad time to get hurt”. I repeated this to myself in my head a few times. I wasn’t the only one thinking that. So many people were just out there, standing in place, or walking without a clear direction. There was undeniably a tension in the air. As I got into the centre of town I realised the garbage had been picked up around there, because of course it was. So much for my multi-apocalyptic photography. The city centre basically looked the same as any other day, except the amount of people on the streets was double or triple the normal amount. I overheard people saying different things. It is all of Spain. Something about a cyberattack. No cell coverage, no internet, no electricity, anywhere in the country. A police woman told a group of people “this has never happened on this scale”. I kept walking.
The crowds of tourists were jittery. They walked faster than normal, as if in a rush. But a rush to where? I saw a line of people queuing outside an old photography store. What for? Radios, of course. Battery powered radios had become, from one moment to the next, the only possible source of information available. I had one at home. I bought it a few months ago, to have something on while I showered and not have to set up another fucking Bluetooth device. I should have taken it with me, but I didn’t think about it. In fact, most of the implications hadn’t even crossed my mind, yet. I talked to a national guard officer outside an official building. He confirmed the power had been cut in all of Portugal, Spain and the south of France. He had no idea of the reason and there was no official message. He seemed kind of in disbelief, not what you want to see from these normally obnoxiously self-assured manly men. Walking in a giant crowd of confused tourists, I started to feel uneasy. The problems this was going to create, if it went on for a few more hours, started to dawn on me. I had to make my way back home. I overheard another policeman saying WhatsApp texts were occasionally getting through. I texted my girlfriend, who was at work, just in case. We had barely any food in the house, and an electric hob, so we wouldn’t be able to heat up anything. I didn’t panic but something like panic was certainly building up somewhere within me. The bus stations on main thoroughfares had about a hundred people waiting around them. The crowds were getting bigger and angrier. Someone tried to ask the bus driver something and the whole line started yelling at them thinking they were trying to skip the line. Everywhere you looked the sidewalks were full. People had been let off work early and had no option but to have a long walk home. Police cars and ambulances. I had to get back home before it got worse, before it got bad.
I had three euros in cash. No, two. No ATMs would work. None of the big supermarkets would do me a solid. In fact, Lidl had barricaded the doors with cold storage boxes in anticipation of what might happen next. What could I do? My good old corner store, which opens until midnight, and which has recently started storing packages. They knew my face and my name, they would trust me. I made my way through the crowds and back to familiar territory and instantly felt better. I explained my situation to the lady at the corner store, and they let me take a bunch of food and put it on a tab to pay later. I was so fucking relieved. I got a few cans of cooked beans, lentils and chickpeas. Since we couldn’t heat up anything, that was basically the only viable choice. Oh, and quite a few snacks because why the hell not. As they were writing it all down on a notepad, a guy behind me said “Thank god you’re charging regular prices, the guy up the road is charging 15 euros for a little sandwich!”. The shop ladies joked around but it didn’t sound like he was joking. I got home. I breathed deep. I filled all the bottles I own with tap water while there was still tap water. I turned on the radio.
There were about 6 channels left live on the radio. A classical music program and another one about how to pray were clearly pre-recorded (I hope). Another one with breaking news music in the background confidently floated the cyberattack idea and claimed there were power outages all across Europe (Ireland, France, Luxemburg, Italy and Greece, if I recall correctly). This all turned out to be false. They were already personally blaming the president for the failure, saying he should have explanations already and “act like a leader”, after which they started reading verbatim tweets from the opposition, which was calling for the army to be mobilised already. Another channel posited the advice “If you know somebody who is stuck in an elevator, please call the emergency services”. This is why I don’t listen to the radio. Anyway, the official national radio had a power grid expert on who seemed very knowledgeable about the issue, and explained it clearly. He said the power would most likely be back on in 80% of the country by the end of the day. The causes would take months to figure out, but the amount of simultaneous failures that had to occur to have such a widespread impact made it highly unlikely that it was accidental. My girlfriend got back home a few hours later than usual. She had managed to catch a bus. After a while, before sunset, the power came back on. All was well.
The general mood was more nervous and confused than outright chaotic, which is nice for such an unexpected and disruptive thing. Parents picked up their kids from school and had a nice day out. Everyone was out in the streets chatting and trying to make each other feel less insane. I saw people sitting on the floor playing cards for the first time since I moved here. I took another walk later with the radio on and people gathered to listen (not that we learned much). It was a hell of a test. I saw no violence, no looting and no madness, just a general unease. I think the pandemic lingered in everyone’s minds, specifically those days in March 2020, which felt very similar. The weight of what might happen, more than anything else. In the end, service was fully restored within 12 hours. Hospitals held up with back up power. The people stuck in elevators and trains suffered the worst of it, but there were no great casualties. Overall, I am proud to have the neighbours I have and to live in this country.
You have to wonder though, if it wasn’t fixed, what would have happened? With almost nobody carrying cash, it would have been a huge problem real quick, it almost was for me. The water worked for the time being, but it would have stopped soon without pumps. It really felt like a near-societal-collapse experience, even more than Covid. During Covid, we were all connected and comforted by technology, heating, water and food. Without electricity… none of that is possible. Scary shit!