Travel mayhem in Spain and Portugal as power outage grounds flights, paralyzes train networks

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - MADRID — A blackout brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill Monday, halting trains and causing major disruption at airports.

Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica said that restoring power to large parts of the country and neighboring Portugal could take 6-10 hours.

Capital cities Madrid and Lisbon, as well as Seville, Barcelona and Valencia, have been left without the internet and electricity, plunging transport networks into chaos.

Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at Red Eléctrica, told journalists it was unprecedented, calling the event “exceptional and extraordinary”.

The power outage sparked mayhem at airports in Spain and Portugal on Monday. So far, around 200 flights, mostly to and from Lisbon, have been canceled.

There have been no complete closures as airports are operating on backup generators.

Spain's Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, said in a post on X that air traffic control towers were operating with restrictions and air traffic capacity has been reduced by up to half in some areas.

At Madrid airport, many flights to destinations within Spain and to/from Portugal were cancelled. There could be further schedule changes overnight if power is not restored soon.

Some departures from Madrid and Lisbon to the US are severely delayed, and overnight flights to Latin America could be affected by a prolonged outage, leaving thousands of passengers potentially stranded.

At Barcelona Airport, international flights are operating with a one or two-hour delay, while many domestic flights have been scrapped.

Airports in Alicante and Malaga don't appear to be severely affected.

Airports in the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands have not been affected and are operating as normal, with only some cancellations of domestic flights.

In a post on X, Aena advised passengers to contact their airline for updates.

In Lisbon, terminals closed, and throngs of tourists sat outside in the sun and the shade, waiting for news about their flights. Three out of 10 flights from Lisbon have been cancelled so far, according to aviation analysts Cirium.

“We haven’t seen any plane arriving or departing in the 50 minutes we’ve been waiting here,” Dutch tourist Marc Brandsma told The Associated Press.

EasyJet released a statement earlier in the day stating that the blackout was impacting access to some airports and affecting its flight operations in Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona.

"Like all airlines, we are experiencing some disruption to our flying programme meaning that some return flights from Lisbon and Madrid have been unable to operate," the airline said. "Our flying programme at Porto and Faro airports is operating as planned."

The airline is urging passengers to monitor local travel advice and flight trackers for updates.

They also say passengers in Spain or Portugal who are unable to travel are being provided with free-of-charge transfers within 72 hours or a flight voucher, according to the BBC.

The video aired on Spanish television showed people evacuating metro stations in Madrid and empty stations with trains stopped in Barcelona.

The country’s railway operator, Renfe, made an announcement just after midday, saying that the “entire National Electricity Grid was cut off” and that trains were unable to depart from stations.

At 4.30 pm CET, Renfe confirmed that all services were still suspended due to the power outages.

Puente said that it was not likely that medium and long-distance train services would resume today. The aim is to resume shorter-distance, commuter services as soon as the electricity supply is restored.

It could take some time, however, for rail services to return to normal as control systems need to recover and trains will need to be repositioned. In a post on X, Puente advised passengers not to go to stations until further notice. Work is still underway to rescue people from the 116 trains stranded due to the blackout.

The following stations will remain open all night: Atocha, Chamartín, Sants, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla, Córdoba, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Málaga, Pamplona, Camp de Tarragona, Tudela, Santiago, Zamora, and León. Passengers will be evacuated to these stations.

Portugal’s rail network has also been hit by the blackout, but travellers were already braced for disruption due to a national strike which saw train services suspended on Monday anyway.

Although there were outages in some parts of France, too, trains don’t seem to have been affected.

“In France, homes were without power for several minutes in the Basque Country. All power has since been restored,” said RTE, the French electricity operator. — Euronews