While the causes of the massive power outage that paralyzed the entire Spanish mainland on Monday were still being discussed, the recovery from this historic event was taking place gradually. The restoration process began in the south and north of the country and gradually moved to the center, bringing light to 13 of the peninsula’s 15 municipalities, excluding Cantabria and La Rioja, around 7 p.m. on this chaotic day of the “electricity crisis.”
By 8 p.m., the electricity grid already had 5,508 megawatts (MW) of power, consisting of autonomous production capacity restored after the outage and capacity imported from neighboring countries, particularly France. This compared to the 25,000 megawatts that had reduced demand to zero on Monday around 12:30 p.m. “Supply is gradually being restored in all the country’s electricity areas, with 45% of the transmission system’s substations already back in operation,” Red Eléctrica reported.
The enormous challenge of restoring power was tackled by Red Eléctrica and the electricity distribution companies, who began coordinating when, around 12:30 p.m., a sharp drop in the voltage curve indicated that Monday would not be a normal day. Only the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, which have separate power grids, as well as Ceuta and Melilla, were spared the outage. Air traffic, which was reduced by 20 to 30% in the late afternoon due to telecommunications security concerns, was virtually the only activity still operating on this “Black Monday,” which saw power cuts in homes, industries, businesses, and hospitals, and traffic lights in cities and trains stopped operating.
The first positive news came around 1:30 p.m. from the substations in northern and southern Spain closest to Morocco and France—the countries with which Spain and Portugal, which were also “cut off,” have electricity connections. Although these connections are limited and French capacity has been considered expandable by the government in the past, they were sufficient for Red Eléctrica technicians to begin restoring electrical power on Monday. This process, as in other areas of the country, required adjusting consumption to electricity demand.
Two hours later, at 3:30 p.m., REE reported that it had also successfully restored electrical power to substations in the west of the peninsula.
From 5 p.m. onward, the work appeared to be progressing more rapidly, reaching increasingly more areas of Spain. At that point, Red Eléctrica did not believe that full normality had been restored in any municipality, but by 7 p.m., power had already been restored in “areas” of 13 of the 15 affected autonomous regions, with the exception of La Rioja and Cantabria.
In its latest update reports, Red Eléctrica initially announced that power had been restored in Catalonia, Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, La Rioja, Asturias, Navarre, Castile and León, Extremadura, and Andalusia. Shortly thereafter, it also reported that supplies had begun in other regions.
After 7 p.m., Endesa announced on social media that, together with REE, power had already been restored to “more than a third of our customers,” i.e., approximately 3.5 million e-distribution customers.
Red Eléctrica’s Electricity Control Center (CECOEL) in Madrid became one of the central nerve centers for repair work on the fault that—for reasons still unclear—caused the widespread power outage affecting almost all of Spain. The incident also had political repercussions, as shortly after this “national zero point,” the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the Third Vice President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, and the Secretary of State for Energy, Joan Groizard, met with their leadership teams to coordinate the measures to restore the supply, the ministry reported.
