Two European countries, Spain and Portugal, were hit by a major power outage on Monday.
News360 Info reports that while it is yet unclear the total number of cities affected, the two former colonial powers have a total of 50 million citizens.
However, Spain and Portugal’s capital cities were affected; subway networks, phone lines, traffic lights, and ATM machines were shut down by the power surge.
In Portugal, the outage hit the capital, Lisbon, and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country.
Quoting Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE, the Associated Press (AP) disclosed that the major power outage occurred just after midday local time.
AP further reported that Spanish generator, Red Eléctrica, said it affected the Iberian Peninsula and that the incident is being assessed.
In Spain, electricity demand witnessed a steep drop from around 12:15 p.m., falling from 27,500 MW to nearly 15,000 MW.
Some of the affected places included Spain’s parliament in Madrid and subway stations across the country, which were left in the dark.
Portugal’s government said the incident appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told national news agency Lusa.
A Portuguese distributor, E-Redes, told Portuguese newspaper Expresso that the outage was due to “a problem with the European electricity system,”.
The company said it was compelled to cut power in specific areas to stabilise the network, according to Expresso.
Spain’s Cabinet Minister Leitão Amaro was quoted: “It looks like it was a problem with the distribution network, apparently in Spain. It’s still being ascertained.”
