A major power cut across the entire Iberian Peninsula called for a state of emergency at 12:33pm local time Monday afternoon.

Over 50 million people across Spain and Portugal have been affected. Impacts included hospitals have had to rely on backup generators, nuclear reactors shut down, public transportation came to a standstill, multiple roads were gridlocked, and citizens lost access to phone and internet connections.

The unprecedented outage remains a mystery and there have been speculations of sabotage.

The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez is investigating the circumstances and reportedly met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“This is something that has never happened before,” Sánchez said. “All potential causes are being analysed and no hypothesis or possibility is being ruled out.”

Portugese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro said that there was “no indication” the outage was a result of a cyberattack but acknowledged the need for “more advanced security mechanisms” to reduce the impact of similar events.

Grid operator experts in both countries are split as to why the outage occurred. Portugal’s grid operator faults the event on extreme temperature variations, whereas Spain’s grid operator blames a connection failure with France.

Spain has received aid from France and Morocco who have sent additional electricity to the country. Approximately 60 per cent of their national supply has been regained, and PM Sánchez aims to resolve the issue by Tuesday.

Portugal’s electricity supply is likely to follow slowly after due to their dependence on their connection to Spain.

“It is true that the circumstance of Spain having, particularly with Europe, connection limitations, then affects the supply capacity to Portugal,” PM Montenegro said.

Photo: Power lines by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson found HERE and used under a Creative Commons license. This image has not been modified.