Spain‘s national grid operator warned two months ago that the use of renewable energy risked ‘disconnections’ in the system, Spanish media reports, as the country continues to deal with the impact of the historic nationwide blackout.
Red Eléctrica (REE), which is partly state-owned, protected itself from the market recognising the ‘short-term risk’ caused by the introduction of renewables into the system, El Mundo reports.
The firm also told investors that the reduction of power provided by nuclear or gas in the grid ‘increases the risk of operational incidents’, according to news outlet El Confidencial.
REE’s System Operations Chief Eduardo Prieto today admitted that it was possible that solar power could be to blame for Monday’s outages, but added that it was too early to say for sure.
He ruled out the the possibility that yesterday’s blackout was caused by a cyberattack or atmospheric phenomenon, as initial reports suggested.
It comes as the first fatalities from the disaster have been reported, with four people said to have been killed as a result of domestic medical ventilator failures.
A family of three were found dead in Taboadela, Ourense, La Voz de Galicia reported today as the grid managed to recover power across the nation.
Civil Guard officers said they found the married couple, aged 81 and 77, and their 56-year-old son this morning.
Passengers were forced to camp out on the platform at Malaga train station last night amid the power cuts
People wait on a platform as metro operations resumed partially in Madrid today
Travelers covered with Red Cross blankets lie on the floor, as they prepare to spend the night at the Cordoba train station
People shop for groceries using their phone as flashlight during a widespread power outage that struck Spain and Portugal around midday on Monday
Long queues occurred at Chamartan Station, but train services are now slowly returning to normal after power outages
It is suspected they died from carbon monoxide poisoning during the outages, due to combustion issues with a generator installed to keep a respirator working.
A 46-year-old woman was separately reported to have died on Monday in the Valencian town on Alzira after her oxygen machine lost power during the blackouts.
Police in the east coast city said the woman, who was suffering from a lung infection, had stopped breathing and was unable to be resuscitated.
Major outages across Spain and Portugal on Monday caused widespread disruption, grounding flights and halting trains as phone lines and internet were cut off.
While power was recovered today, holidaymakers continue to face disruption and further uncertainty as they battle lengthy journeys home.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday that the government had set up a commission to investigate what triggered the incident, and refused to rule out any hypothesis.
‘All the necessary measures will be taken to ensure that this does not happen again,’ he told a press conference.
Spain’s top criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, said it was investigating whether the blackout was ‘an act of computer sabotage on critical infrastructure’ that could be classified as ‘a terrorism offence’.
While chaos largely abated on Tuesday, with telephone, internet and lights working again, many holidaymakers now back online shared their stories of becoming trapped in Spain and Portugal on Tuesday.
As many as 205 flights leaving Spanish airports were cancelled on Monday, with dozens more diverted to other airports, as swathes of the country ground to a halt.
In Portugal, 185 departures were put off, and 187 cancelled, aviation data company Cirium reports.
While major airlines said today they were planning to resume business as usual on Tuesday, many faced lengthy waits as they tried to make their way home.
At Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport in Porto, many woke up on Tuesday after an uncomfortable night sleeping on old clothes and rucksacks.
Huge queues formed at dawn, a MailOnline reporter in Porto saw.
Similar crowds gathered at Atocha train station.
In Galicia, all trains were still suspended ‘until further notice’ early on Tuesday – before resuming later in the day.
Carmen Marin wrote on X on Tuesday morning that she had spent almost 24 hours trapped on a train from Malaga during Monday’s blackout.
Carmen Marin wrote on X on Tuesday morning that she had spent almost 24 hours trapped on a train from Malaga during Monday’s blackout. Picture shows people being handed food brought to the train
People were forced to sleep on stranded trains in the Spanish countryside amid the outages
‘Having spent the night on the train and being in Villanueva de Córdoba with no clear way to return home (a bit in the middle of nowhere), I draw several conclusions.’
‘People lose their sanity very quickly in extreme situations. I’ve seen people eating as if they hadn’t eaten in days… and we haven’t lacked anything…
‘I can’t imagine what this situation would have been like without the assistance and help of wonderful, selfless people. Children and elderly people were taken away before nightfall. Food distribution was organized. There are also good people.’
She said she the outage had helped her realise the dependency on the grid for all modern living.
‘We’re nothing without the power grid. It’s crazy. My head explodes just thinking about it,’ she wrote.
British holidaymaker Adrian Coles, who was heading back to the UK after a weekend in Madrid when the blackout hit, told MailOnline that he had struggled to get to the airport.
He described the situation in the city centre on Monday as ‘carnage’, telling MailOnline: ‘People are starting to panic. It’s going to get really bad if they don’t restore power quickly.’
‘People are fighting over taxis and the streets are mostly at a standstill. Police are at junctions but at some they are just standing and not directing while at others they have whistles and are directing traffic,’ he said.
Lottie Feist, 23, who lives in Lisbon, told of panic across the Portuguese capital as traffic lights cut out.
Spain begins to return to normal after a massive blackout left the entire Iberian Peninsula without electricity for hours
People wait at Sants station for the resumption of the train services due to a disruption in the regional train schedule, in Barcelona, Spain, 29 April
The outages have caused huge disruption across Spain and Portugal (Sants pictured today)
The translation student at Nova University said: ‘There is no electricity, nothing is working.
‘We don’t know what’s happening or why we are having a blackout.
‘The roads are absolute carnage as no traffic lights are working.
‘All the power is down, and businesses are being impacted.
‘It’s terrifying, people will be stuck in elevators, and everything has completely shut down.’
Maddie Sephton, from London, was on the Madrid Metro when the power outage occurred, told Sky News that she was stuck on a train for 20 minutes before a staff member pried the doors open manually.
‘We got on the train and everything was fine. But then everything went dark,’ she said. Passengers had to climb 15 flights of stairs to get out of the metro.
An ex-pat called Lesley, has lived in Spain for 11 years with her husband, told the BBC that they are concerned about the effects of the outages.
‘We are worried about food, water, cash and petrol in case this goes on for a couple of days,’ she said.
‘My husband is driving around now trying to find a petrol station that’s open to get petrol for the generator so that we can plug in the fridge.’
Video shared on X showed Spaniards sleeping under red blankets at the RENFE train station in Cordoba overnight into Tuesday as the blackouts continued.
Many had no way to return home after the outages, Alerta Mundial reported.
A British expat in Barcelona told MailOnline that there were huge queues for buses after working hours on Monday, with the metro knocked offline in the Catalan capital.
Video shows people camping on the floor of the station in southern Spain amid the outages
‘Traffic is crazy. The mopeds and motorbikes are heading down the cycle lanes. There are massive queues to catch the bus because without the metro there’s no way that anybody can get home from work,’ they said.
‘There is power in some downstairs premises, so it’s not a total blackout. But internet up here doesn’t work at all. There’s also an eerie silence, apart from the cars. But everything is quiet.’
Spain and Portugal recovered their electricity supply and a semblance of normalcy on Tuesday.
An employee of Spanish state-owned rail company RENFE speaks into a megaphone as passengers wait before boarding their train at Sants railway station in Barcelona on April 29
Passengers held up at Sants train station in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, April 29
Telephone, internet and lights were working again, train services resumed, shops reopened and workers flocked back to offices following the outage that struck on Monday afternoon and lasted up to 20 hours in some places.
No firm cause for the shutdown has yet emerged, though rumours spread on messaging networks about cyberattacks and an unusual ‘atmospheric phenomenon’.
The operations director of Spanish grid operator REE, Eduardo Prieto, said on Monday there was ‘a major fluctuation in the power flow, accompanied by a very large loss of production’.
That ‘surpassed the reference disruption for which the electric systems are designed and operated’ in the European Union, triggering ‘a disconnection of the peninsular Spanish electric system from the rest of the European system’, which collapsed the Spanish and Portuguese networks, he explained.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said ‘all the potential causes’ were being analysed and warned the public ‘not to speculate’ because of the risk of ‘misinformation’.
