Yesterday, April 28th, at 12:33 PM, and due to causes that are still unknown, all of Spain – and Portugal as well – were left without power. Trains stopped in the middle of the countryside, subways halted in the middle of tunnels. Elevators with hundreds of residents trapped throughout the country. Traffic lights off, refrigerators and freezers off. Businesses open but unable to charge customers or close, in the case of electric shutters. Communications down… A minor chaos in which only the calm and competence of everyone prevented greater harm.
And not a single news report until 6:00 PM when the President of the Government appeared to explain that the major blackout was due to the sudden loss of 15GW of power – the equivalent of 60% of consumption at that time – which had led the system, managed according to Pedro Sánchez by “the private operator Redeia,” to collapse.
Striking, without a doubt, that Sánchez has shifted responsibility to Redeia, labeling the company as a “private operator,” when REDEIA, the technical manager of the Spanish electricity system, is firmly controlled by the State, which holds the largest share package – 20% – of this listed company whose president, Beatriz Corredor, is appointed by the Government.
By midnight, service had been restored to almost two-thirds of Spanish households, but on the morning of Tuesday the 29th, many parts of the country remain without electricity and the causes of this sudden drop in electricity production are still unknown. Cyberattack? Collapse of renewable production when three of the country’s seven nuclear power plants were shut down? … We may have to wait days, even weeks, to find out the cause of what happened, which has never occurred before.
Sánchez says that “nothing is ruled out,” and as the judicial processing of Pedro Sánchez’s brother – for “influence peddling” – was also known yesterday, the unusual day ended with a witty “meme” that flooded the networks – those that managed to function – late into the dark night: “The PSOE has plugged in so many people that the system has blown up”…
It is illustrative that on the same day Spain went dark, speculation arose in the media about the negotiations of the electricity companies to avoid the progressive closure of the seven Spanish nuclear power plants, which, with 20% of production, provide support and stability to renewable generation. And that today – after the whole country lost an entire day – the Government is going to approve a half-hour weekly reduction in working hours, to 37.5 hours.
