Brussels Signal‘s head of news, Justin Stares, was in Spain during the mega blackout hitting the Iberian Peninsula and has reported from the scene.
At the time of the outage on April 28, he was in the city of Granada in the south of the country. Airports, trains and internet and mobile coverage were among the services hit by the blackout.
Stares said it was “amazing and slightly concerning to see how quickly society came to a stop”.
“We were in a restaurant and initially it stayed open, only accepting cash, but then they shut down very quickly, as did the supermarkets.
“It left us thinking, ‘Wow, they talk about keeping emergency cash but there is no point keeping emergency cash if you can’t actually buy anything,’ which was the case after the supermarket shut.
“Not only did they shut but we saw one or two that started barricading because they couldn’t shut the electronic doors and had no electricity inside, so they were protecting the supermarkets by barricading the doors and just sitting outside.”
According to Stares, the strangest thing was the complete lack of information about what was happening.
When he first contacted Brussels Signal offices, all power was still out in Granada. The expectation was that it would come back quickly and there were rumours that other places in Spain already had electricity again.
“Not knowing what’s going on is a very unusual feeling in the internet world, isn’t it?,” he said.
At the time, he said those around him assumed the blackout had happened in Portugal, in the south of Spain, and also Morocco, “but we don’t actually know if that’s true”, he added.
“Obviously, some people like us were buying emergency food. The people who were open the longest were the Chinese little shops which remained open after the supermarkets shut, happily.
“Everyone was stocking up food and what have you,” Stares added.
“Also, there were some fruit sellers who had scales that were battery-powered, suddenly, batteries became very important.”
He also noted that many horrific stories were circulating of people dying or having the lights go out in surgery operating rooms and of folk being stuck in lifts.
Stares said he saw a heavy police presence on the streets, first and foremost directing the traffic after all the traffic lights failed.
“Hopefully, by the time you get this, the power will be back on,” Stares concluded.
