What happens when two entire countries suddenly lose power?
For Spain and Portugal, the answer came crashing in on Tuesday.
Trains stopped mid-track, elevators froze mid-floor, and internet and phone signals vanished like a magician’s trick.
“It’s like something out of a movie,” said Carlos Candori, 19, who had to evacuate the Madrid metro.
“No signal. No way to call my family. I couldn’t even get to work.”
What Happened?
In a matter of seconds, over 15,000 megawatts—more than half of Spain’s active power—vanished.
This plunged nearly 60 million people into chaos.
While electricity is mostly back now, no one’s quite sure what triggered the outage.
Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez urged people not to jump to conclusions.
Especially not the cyberattack theories lighting up group chats.
Stunned citizens queued for cash, crammed into taxis, and wandered city streets searching for signal.
Nearly 300 rescue operations freed people stuck in lifts just in Madrid.
Airports and hospitals ran on backup generators.
Some stranded passengers even slept in train stations overnight.
