Saturday, March 29, 2025
The Spain power blackout investigation is underway as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urges energy firms to help identify the cause of the massive national outage.
The Spain power blackout investigation has officially begun after a severe and unexplained power failure disrupted life across Spain and Portugal on Monday. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is calling on private energy providers to work closely with the government to uncover the root cause of the outage, which left trains halted, elevators stuck, and resulted in at least five reported deaths.
Despite early dismissals of a cyberattack, Spain’s top criminal court has opened a Spain power blackout investigation to determine whether sabotage or external interference targeted the country’s critical infrastructure.
Portugal has also called for an EU-led independent audit to assess vulnerabilities across both national systems.
In response to the crisis, Sánchez convened an emergency meeting with leaders of Red Eléctrica, Endesa, Iberdrola, Naturgy, and other major power companies. The prime minister stressed the need for joint efforts to identify the failure’s cause and protect the country’s energy security and competitiveness.
“The blackout showed how fragile our infrastructure can be. We must act together to ensure this never happens again,” Sánchez said after the meeting.
Red Eléctrica’s president, Beatriz Corredor, confirmed that 15 gigawatts—roughly 60% of national power use—suddenly dropped off the grid at 12:33 p.m. on Monday, causing the nationwide outage. She said the source has been identified, but a massive amount of data is still under review.
“We know what triggered it, but we’re analyzing millions of data points that were recorded in milliseconds,” Corredor told Cadena Ser radio.
The blackout sparked political backlash, with opposition parties blaming Sánchez’s energy strategy. The People’s Party (PP) accused the government of pushing renewables while sidelining nuclear energy, claiming this made the grid less reliable.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal went further, calling Sánchez’s renewable push “disastrous” and demanded he face legal consequences for the blackout.
Sánchez hit back, saying: “Linking the blackout to renewable energy is either dishonest or deeply uninformed. Nuclear energy isn’t inherently more resilient.”
Corredor echoed this view, defending Spain’s renewable energy systems as stable and safe.
