Transcript of Power returning to Spain and Portugal after blackout | BBC News

now over to Europe electricity is being restored across Spain and Portugal a day after a massive power cut it caused disruption to millions of shops homes and businesses and paralyzed transport networks in both countries the operator of Spain's national grid says that power has now been restored to 90% of the country's mainland but the effects of the blackout are likely to be felt for days well our correspondents in Spain and Portugal gave us the latest from the ground here's Geekco in Madrid well certainly in central Madrid it feels as if things are pretty much uh back to normal traffic is flowing again after those problems with traffic lights uh yesterday um however there are some exceptions uh schools are not uh open as normal today in many areas of the country and another big exception is rail travel there's still quite severe disruption in many areas of the country particularly up in the region of Catalonia uh and some other areas and many rail passengers uh did spend a night out in in stations uh last night so um things are still returning to normal um there's a feeling that we're not quite back to 100% but the authorities are telling us that in the coming hours are hoping that we will be back up to 100% of uh uh energy uh supply and we'll be back to relatively speaking back to normal guy there in Madrid Allison you're in Lisbon we understand that as Guy was saying schools not reopening fully across Spain but the situation is slightly different in Portugal what's the scenario there like well right now I'm actually in the north of Portugal the lights came on a little bit earlier than in Lisbon last night uh but now there are perhaps a couple of hundred,000 people only uh without power the government says that they do hope that that will all be resolved in the coming hours and as you can see behind me traffic is certainly flowing uh things pretty much back to normal we had some difficulty with the Lisbon Metro system for example this morning it opened rather later than usual uh most schools should actually be open and functioning today certainly the government said that it expected that uh so the expectation is that things will be pretty much back to normal today throughout the day okay and the overwhelming question guy is why what was behind this huge power outage i know that Spain's increasing reliance on solar and wind was said to have exacerbated the power cuts what kind of commentary has there been there in Spain well yes I mean that's one of the things that people are are talking about at the moment and and I think you know understandably there's going to be a lot of focus on how Spain uh generates its electricity where it comes from um we do know that that Spain and Portugal were cut off from the main European uh grid yesterday but we don't know what why this happened um inevitably I think there's a lot of talk about cyber attacks possibly but the government's been quite adamant that we shouldn't jump to conclusions it's saying that it's not ruling out any possibilities there was one senior politician in the south of the country Juan Moreno yesterday who seemed to be pointing the finger very firmly at a cyber attack but the government um has insisted that we we don't know that uh at the moment that's uh just one hypothesis um and it's saying we have to be patient and wait for more information before we know exactly what happened yeah and Allison Portugal's leader Prime Minister Luis Montenegro was very quick yesterday to say that this wasn't a cyber attack well he said certainly there's nothing that could point to that and obviously there there were people who came out and said this looks as though it's a cyber attack but certainly the government said there's no evidence pointing to that at all but from the point of view of Portugal obviously they are looking to Spain now to see um if they can work out what the causes are um when Portugal came back up again it was very much a a local affair with two major power stations getting the system back and running with no help from Spain so they're back to the old days um when the two systems were running separately because normally they are very much interconnected and that's why Portugal was affected uh with this uh power outage and guy you've talked about the disruption on across the nail works across the Madrid metro but tennis also being impacted the uh Madrid Open it was the game games were cancelled yesterday what's the situation like today do we know um well that's right it was and this is a major sporting event uh not just for Madrid but for for Spain um the latest I'm told is is that I believe that play is is expected to resume uh today but we're awaiting further details uh about that but you know I think this it shows how far this outage reached not just into things like transport and traffic and so on but into many other areas of life um and how it even affected sport yesterday yeah indeed and Allison just a final word from you then just as slowly those power supplies are re re-energized and people are getting back to normal i wonder was there a sense of exasperation across the public in Portugal or was it down to business as usual albeit without essential mobile phones well there was some degree of panic yesterday a lot of uh people rushing to what shops were open to buy essentials a lot of people buying water toilet paper this is something we saw uh in lockdown during the pandemic um uh perhaps a little bit of concern that the government didn't come out a little little earlier and make clear uh that it was on the case as it were but in fact for much of the day yesterday it wasn't just the internet in fact it wasn't possible to even make mobile phone calls it was only people who had car radios or or battery powered radios that actually could work out what was going on our thanks to Allison Roberts there in Lisbon Hedgeco in Madrid