Spain experienced widespread phone and internet blackouts on Tuesday, just weeks after a massive power failure plunged the country into darkness. The outage, which began around 2 am, affected landline and mobile services across the country, with fixed-line internet services being the most impacted.
According to Downdetector, 18 per cent of users reported no signal, while 10 per cent experienced a total outage.
The regions affected by the blackouts include the Basque Country, Andalusia, Aragon, and Extremadura, with major cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia also impacted. Emergency call operators faced significant disruptions, with some callers being cut off while trying to reach hospital staff. In response, some emergency service providers set up alternative numbers to ensure households could still get in touch.
Telefonica, the Spanish telecoms giant, attributed the outage to a botched system upgrade. A company spokesperson stated, “This morning we had an incident that affected the fixed communications services of some companies and public services. We have been working from the outset to restore these services, which have now been fully recovered.” The spokesperson added that the incident management committee was activated, and field staff were deployed to resolve specific cases.
The outage affected all major mobile network providers, including Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil, and O2. By lunchtime on Tuesday,
Telefonica announced that the issue had been resolved, with services fully restored. This incident comes just weeks after Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France experienced mass blackouts, affecting around 50 million people and disrupting public transport, critical infrastructure, ATM machines, and phone services.
The recent power outage in late April was attributed to an issue in Europe’s grid, with the Spanish Prime Minister investigating the cause. The grid operator Red Electrica worked with energy companies to restore power, which took several hours. The mass blackouts had significant impacts on daily life, including halting metro trains, managing traffic, and affecting payment systems.
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