MADRID/LISBON: Following a massive outage that brought most of Spain and Portugal to a complete halt, grounding airlines, stopping public transportation, and forcing hospitals to suspend regular operations, power began to restore to areas of the Iberian peninsula late Monday.
In order to maintain order as the governments of the two nations held emergency cabinet talks, Spain’s Interior Ministry declared a national emergency and sent 30,000 police officers nationwide. Such large-scale outages are quite uncommon in Europe.
It was unclear what caused the problem; Portugal said it started in Spain, while Spain blamed a rift in its relationship with France.
There was “no indication” that the outage, which started at 1033GMT, was the result of a hack, according to Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.
