Blackout in Spain and Portugal: The Chaos Captured in 10 Photos

Suddenly, everything came to a halt in Spain and Portugal on Monday afternoon (28/4/25) due to a massive blackout. Hospitals, airports, homes—everything was paralyzed. Planes stopped flying, mobile phones failed to make calls, events like the Madrid Open tennis tournament were canceled, and panic reigned on the streets as citizens were shocked by the power outage. Many rushed to ATMs to withdraw cash. Roads filled with people desperately seeking phone networks. Sirens and car horns blared while many stood stunned… an unprecedented outage in scope. Carlos Kontori was in Madrid’s metro when the mass power failure occurred. ‘The lights went out and the train stopped,’ he told the French Agency. ‘Fortunately, the carriage managed to roll to the platform,’ he said. ‘People were shocked because this hasn’t happened in Spain before… There’s no network, I can’t communicate with my family, my parents, nothing. I can’t even go to work.’