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Spanish News Today Editors Roundup Weekly Bulletin May 2
TOP STORY: "Blackout of the decade—The story behind Spain’s biggest power outage"
So, we’ve got our usual Murcia, Spain, Alicante and Andalucía sections for you in this week’s Editor’s Roundup Weekly Bulletin, but our main focus, as you can imagine, is on the blackout.
Where were you when the blackout struck? What were you doing and how did you get through the ‘apagón’? It’s one of those events we will all remember for the rest of our lives. It will be a defining moment in Spanish politics over the next year, you can bet on that, and will be immortalised in Spanish popular culture for a lifetime.
At Spain Today Online, we’ve been having some problems ourselves all week. Since around the time of the blackout, we’ve had to do a lot of work to restore our servers on MurciaToday.com, SpanishNewsToday.com and our other websites, so if you were trying to access our website this week and were met with an annoying error message, sorry for the inconvenience. Believe me, it was just as annoying for all of us here too!
Now we’re back up and running, though, just in time for your weekly dose of news roundup:
The Apagón
Monday April 28 is a day that will go down in history in Spain (and Portugal and Andorra and parts of southern France) for the most widespread, if not longest lasting, power outage in the area’s history.
At around midday on Monday, everything suddenly ground to a halt as the electricity went off everywhere, leaving homes, hospitals, trains and phones completely dead and useless. Not flickering. Not sputtering. Just off.
Within the space of just five seconds, 60% of Spain’s entire electricity supply disappeared, an unprecedented state of affairs. According to Red Eléctrica, the country’s grid operator, this was not just another hiccough. It was something entirely new, a never-before-seen kind of failure.
At first, most people thought it was just their fuse box on the blink. Or just some worker who had accidentally cut through a power line in their neighbourhood. But as we all started to venture outside, it became clear this was something much bigger.
No electricity at home so all the food in the fridge and freezer was at risk of going bad. No phone signal or internet connection, so no way of knowing what was going on. In homes with an electric-powered water pump, there was no water available. Businesses unable to take card payments or even open the till in some cases to give change. Cash only, where possible, but the ATMs were out of order.
In hospitals, only emergency backup generators supplying power to be able to continue with urgent surgical procedures. Anyone unlucky enough to be travelling in a lift at that precise moment instantly became stuck.
Those with cars or battery-powered radios at home were able to listen to one of about three Spanish-language radio stations still able to run in fits and starts, and to get some idea of the sheer scale of the problem. Half of Europe, they said, including Germany and Italy, although that later turned out not to be true. Was it a terrorist attack? Nuclear Armageddon? Nobody knew.
And there was no way of knowing how long it would go on for, which was in some ways the worst part. At least if we knew it would last for 20 minutes, or an hour, or three days, then we could prepare accordingly. But we were, in a very real sense, in the dark.
As night fell and the streetlights didn’t turn on, and we had no lights in our home and the traffic lights still weren’t working, panic well and truly set in. People who had candles lit them. People who didn’t either went to bed or, in true Spanish style, headed straight for the bar to throw back as many botellines as they could before the beer turned warm.
Meanwhile, people who had scoffed at a warning from the EU just last month that people should have a survival kit prepared to be able to survive for 72 hours self-sufficiently were suddenly reconsidering their stance. At the time, Brussels had recommended that every household stock up on emergency supplies in case of tinned foods, a battery-powered radio, a portable stove with bottled gas, a box of matches and some cash.
The suggestion was initially met with eye rolls and jokes about doomsday prepping. Now, it feels a bit more like eerie, slightly Orwellian foresight.
In fact, by mid-afternoon on Monday, supermarkets were teeming with panicked shoppers buying batteries and bottled water, and when the water ran out then any other single drink. Luckily, red wine doesn’t need to be served chilled.
However, many things do need to stay cool, of course, and we all tried to open the fridges and freezers as little as possible to keep the cold in. Still, the meat and soft cheeses in both homes and supermarkets had to be tossed in the bin.
In some parts of the country, the lights came back on by early evening, around 7.30/8pm. Others woke up early on Tuesday morning, blinded by a light they had left turned on that suddenly came back to life. The worst affected places – which were villages and towns scattered all over the map – didn’t see the power return until well past midday on Tuesday. Over 24 hours without electricity. The most severe blackout in living history for Spain.
There was legitimate tragedy caused by the blackout. People died as a result. In Galicia, a devastating accident claimed the lives of three family members who had set up a generator to power a life-sustaining medical device. The generator, running in the basement, filled the home with carbon monoxide.
In Valencia, a 46-year-old woman who relied on an electric oxygen machine died after it shut down and in Madrid’s Carabanchel district, a candle lit during the outage caused a fire that killed a woman and sent over a dozen neighbours to hospital for smoke inhalation.
Elsewhere across the country, fire crews were kept busy responding to a slew of generator mishaps, including carbon monoxide poisoning cases in Catalonia and A Coruña. The government declared a national emergency situation in eight autonomous communities in order to be able to better supply them with funding and emergency help without having to go through the normal legal channels, as well as to reimburse them for lost income.
There was utter chaos at train stations. The blackout paralysed large sections of the rail network, leading to packed platforms, suspended routes and widespread confusion. But spare a thought for the hundreds of people who were stuck inside a train at the moment of the blackout. They were left sitting there in the carriages for hours, with a little bit of bottled water, until they could be safely evacuated by emergency crews. Even as late as Tuesday morning, there were still three trains left to evacuate, with the passengers having sat there in the dark all night, not knowing when help would come.
Renfe announced that passengers left stranded by the outage could apply for a full refund or exchange their tickets for future travel, which is something, at least.
The economic fallout of the blackout has been estimated at around €1.6 billion, according to the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations (CEOE), with small businesses hit particularly hard, especially restaurants.
Interestingly, though, financial markets responded with an unbothered shrug. The Ibex 35 actually closed the day in the green, something that didn’t happen when they were threatened by Trump’s tariffs. Trading volumes were down, but not enough to cause panic (in the markets, at any rate). Apparently, investors are confident this is a one-off. Let’s hope they’re right.
But actually, all things considered, the country as a whole reacted with remarkable calm. There was no mass looting, even though it would have been the perfect time for it with no streetlights, no alarms and no CCTV. While the traffic lights were not working, people naturally to let pedestrians cross the road out of the goodness of their hearts. It just goes to show the strength of character, community and solidarity that we are willing to show when times get tough.
So what the hell caused it all?
Well, while the lights and the internet went out, the rumour mill switched on at full force. The word ‘cyberattack’ is being bandied about as if everyone really has a clear idea of what that means, and many were quick to blame Putin, or to blame President Pedro Sánchez for making an enemy of Putin.
Others pointed the finger at solar panels and renewable energy sources, that Spain had become too reliant on renewables in too short a space of time and one small problem had triggered a chain reaction that plunged us all into disaster.
Someone even went so far as to suggest that a freak weather phenomenon may have caused the whole thing. Because of all those level 5 electrical storms that weren’t happening on Monday morning? That theory, too, went into the drawer marked ‘unlikely’.
Sánchez made a statement saying that no hypothesis had been ruled out, which didn’t narrow it down for us at all. He said they had pinpointed the problem to a five-second mishap in a Red Eléctrica connection, and that’s the moment they were studying to find out what had happened. So that tells us what happened, technically, but not why.
It probably wasn’t a cyberattack, said Sánchez on Tuesday, before saying on Thursday that they’re still looking into the possibility of a cyberattack, if not on Red Eléctrica’s own facilities then perhaps some kind of digital intrusion on those of one of its subcontracted private partners.
Retired army general Rafael Dávila Álvarez took to the internet (when it came back on) to hint darkly that two unnamed countries who he didn’t name as the USA and Israel probably knew exactly what happened and simply weren’t saying anything. Subtle. The theory of digital warfare gained momentum among conspiracy theorists, fuelled by that creeping suspicion that perhaps someone somewhere did this on purpose. Not that there’s any actual evidence of that.
As for the renewables, investigators do have a suspicion that a large-scale disconnection of solar plants in the southwest of Spain may have set off a domino effect. If true, it’s less a grand act of sabotage and more a case of catastrophic timing and technological fragility. Much less exciting, admittedly, but it would highlight the precarious nature not only of how reliant we all are on electricity for everything we do, but also southern Europe’s fragile energy grid.
But General Dávila did say one thing that might make sense – while investigations into the cause of the blackout are ongoing and a full-scale inquiry has been launched, even if they do find out the real cause, we may never know. If it is something sinister, how likely are they to tell us? And isn’t it convenient that they should use a disaster like this to be able to declare a state of emergency and be able to carry out actions that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get passed in the senate?
Still, anyone running around telling you, “I think it was the Russians” or “It was definitely because of EU Net Zero targets” has about as much idea as you or I do. It’s pure speculation, not based on any semblance of evidence. Sure, it’s healthy to have a good dose of scepticism when it comes to the official announcements made by politicians and business leaders, but that doesn’t mean you should just automatically believe every conspiracy theory out there either. So many times this week I’ve wanted to shake people and shout at them, “Don’t jump to conclusions if you have nothing solid to base it on!” But maybe that’s just me.
For now, we don’t know what actually caused the blackout. What we do know is that by around 24 hours after the lights went off, everything was back up and running again normally, and that it was a historical event that we just lived through in Spain, hopefully not the first of more similar occurrences in the future.
Spain’s energy debate is once again front and centre, with tough questions being asked about how to balance the green transition with basic reliability. The idea that our shiny future might come with more candles and fewer guarantees isn’t a comforting one.
Still, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that when the lights go out, people will do what they’ve always done: light a candle, check incessantly whether their phone is working yet and hope someone, somewhere, knows how to turn things back on.
Murcia
Away from the blackout, there was a dramatic car fire in San Javier earlier this week. Not just any car, but one filled with four British tourists on their way to La Manga del Mar Menor, likely looking forward to a typical holiday of sun, sea and spontaneous combustion.The car, which had been cruising along the RM-F24 near the AP-7 bridge and the Dos Mares shopping centre caught fire, but luckily the four Brits inside managed to escape just in time and, miraculously, avoided any injuries. Firefighters contained the blaze, but it’s hard to say if the rental company was thrilled to take that hit.
Fast forward two days, and the fire drama continued in La Hita, between Los Alcázares and the old San Javier airport. Between 19 and 25 hectares of this patch of scrubland went up in smoke, leading the Nueva Ribera Beach Club and the nearby Camper Park Area to be evacuated. As the blaze spread, the firefighters had to contend with strong winds and dry conditions, making their job harder.
By the time night fell, though, the fire was stabilised, and the emergency response team could breathe a sigh of relief. Police are investigating what may have started the fire, and say that somebody had been spotted entering the area in a car just before the smoke appeared, and then made a hasty getaway and soon as the flames started licking. Suspicious.
This came at the same time as Murcia regional authorities launched the start of their annual fire surveillance network to detect wildfires before they have the chance to become too destructive. As we know, forest fires on the mountains in this and many other parts of Spain are a serious threat each and every summer, and Murcia’s clever early detection system relies on 20 strategically placed lookout points across the region, staffed by a small army of vigilant professionals.
They’re there to spot smoke, track any rogue sparks and get firefighting teams mobilised before things get out of control. In addition, the regional government has poured over €500,000 into improving fire infrastructure this year to try to keep any fire damage to a minimum. There are always forest fires, but the trick is stamping them out quickly and efficiently. Two summers ago was a particularly destructive year for forest fires in Spain, but summer 2024 was surprisingly calm on that front. Let’s hope that trend continues this year.
Murcia’s environmental efforts aren’t limited to fighting fires. The region has also made time to help out the European eel this week. These slippery little guys have been swimming toward the endangered species list for a while now, so the Asociación de Naturalistas del Sureste (ANSE) and WWF Spain launched a project to boost their numbers in the Mar Menor.
Over 900 eels have been tagged and released back into the Mar Menor lagoon, giving conservationists the perfect opportunity to track their movements. The project has already proved promising, and the initiative is collecting critical data that will help scientists make smarter decisions about eel fishing in the future. It is hoped that the results will help shape bigger policy changes, both nationally and at the European level. Just try not to be too alarmed if you feel one of the slippery critters swimming around your ankles while you wade into the water.Finally, the was some good news coming out of Murcia’s Corvera Airport this week, although it kind of got buried in all the blackout stuff. In case you didn’t see, the rumoured Murcia-France flight connection has been confirmed for this summer.
Volotea, the airline founded by Murcia local Carlos Muñoz, has announced that, starting July 7, 2025, passengers will be able to fly directly between Murcia and Marseille twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.
The announcement has got the French understandably excited, but the Brits – who make up a much larger proportion of tourist visitor numbers and spending than the French do in Murcia – are still clamouring to be given more new flight destinations, please. Ask Volotea, as they seem to be the ones most keen to grow their operations at Corvera right now. Send your petitions to Mr Muñoz now and you never know, we might have some Newcastle or Southend flights for summer 2026, if not necessarily the winter low season.
Don’t forget to check our EVENTS DIARY to see events and activities coming up soon in the Region of Murcia:
Spain
After all the excitement at the end of April, here’s hoping for a less dramatic May, and what better way to slow down than with a little star-gazing. Each new month brings its very own, specially-named full moon with a particular significance, and May surely won’t disappoint with the romantic-sounding Flower Moon.
The Flower Moon will rise on Monday May 12 at 6.56pm Spanish peninsular time, offering a beautiful celestial display. This full moon appears at the heart of spring, when wildflowers blanket the landscape and nature is in full bloom – an ideal match for a moon named after the season’s blossoms.
The name ‘Flower Moon’ has deep seasonal and cultural origins. It comes from Native American traditions, especially those of northeastern tribes such as the Algonquian peoples. They named each full moon according to the changes they observed in the natural world.
In May, fields and forests would erupt in colour and this moon marked not only a visual transformation but also a turning point in seasonal rhythms. It signalled the time for planting, communal gatherings and the renewal of life.
As always, the best time to view May’s full moon will be just after sunset and in a location far from town or city light pollution – such as during a massive blackout, if you’re lucky.
Beyond the full moon, May brings a series of celestial events that will excite stargazers. On May 2, the asteroid Vesta, the brightest object in the asteroid belt, will reach opposition. The following day, on May 3, the Moon will align closely with Mars in the evening sky. On May 4, Venus and Neptune will make a close approach, appearing just two degrees apart.
The Eta Aquariids meteor shower, caused by debris from Halley’s Comet, will peak on May 6. In the early pre-dawn hours, up to 50 meteors per hour may be visible under clear skies.
From May 10 to May 14, rare stellar occultations will occur, as the Moon briefly passes in front of the bright stars Spica and Antares, momentarily hiding them from view.
On to less pleasant matters now and it’s been a terribly tragic week at the world-famous Ibiza Rocks hotel, where two tourists, one British and one Italian, died within three days of each other.
On Wednesday April 30, a 33-year-old British woman was found unresponsive in her room at the popular hotel in Sant Antoni de Portmany. Emergency services and local police arrived at the scene shortly after 6.30pm and immediately attempted resuscitation. Despite working for more than 40 minutes, medics were unable to revive her, and she was declared dead at the scene.
It has since been confirmed that the woman had a pre-existing heart condition and was travelling with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, which is used to prevent sudden cardiac arrest. Local media reports suggest that her death was due to natural causes linked to her medical history.
Just three days earlier, on Sunday April 27, a 19-year-old Italian tourist of Turkish origin died after falling from the fourth floor. It is believed that the young woman may have been attempting to re-enter her room via the balcony when the fatal fall occurred.
Her body was discovered at around 9am by a hotel staff member. Emergency services were called but tragically, she was already deceased by the time help arrived.
The Guardia Civil has launched an investigation into both incidents to determine the exact circumstances surrounding each death.
The hotel management company issued a statement expressing regret for the tragic events and expressing “dismay and utmost support to the families of the victims, thanking them for respecting their privacy in the face of this situation of incalculable pain.”
In a story with a happier ending, an 82-year-old British tourist was rescued on Sunday April 27 after suffering a serious leg injury while hiking in the hills near Port d’Andratx, Mallorca. The incident unfolded at around 5pm as the man was walking with two friends along a mountain route.Emergency services were alerted after the man lost his footing, reportedly due to wearing inappropriate footwear for the rugged terrain. After the fall, he was in too much pain to continue, and his companions immediately called 112, providing their exact location to emergency operators.
Once the injured hiker was tracked down, fire crews worked to immobilise his leg before carefully carrying him down the mountain to a waiting ambulance.
He was transported to a private clinic in Palma for medical treatment. While no further update on his condition has been given, his injuries were described as serious.
One of the emergency responders said, “He was lucky to be with people who acted quickly. Accidents like this can become much more serious if help is delayed or if someone is out walking alone.”
Alicante
Alicante holidaymakers can rest a little easier since two women have been arrested in Benidorm after spending nearly a year targeting unsuspecting tourists as they checked in and out of hotels.
The pair, who frequently made the trip back and forth from Alicante city, had developed a tight routine. They hung around hotel entrances and bus stops, waiting for distracted visitors juggling luggage or trying to get their bearings.
According to the National Police, they often singled out elderly holidaymakers, following them until the moment was right to quietly lift a wallet or bag from a backpack or suitcase.
Their approach was straightforward but clearly effective. While one acted as a lookout, the other would do the stealing. Then they would jump into their car and disappear before anyone noticed. It worked for a long time, but after months of investigating, officers were able to link the women to at least five thefts between September 2024 and March 2025. Police believe there could be more.
Both women were already on the police radar for similar crimes in the past. After being brought before a judge, they were banned from much of central Benidorm, particularly the areas most popular with tourists where they’d been operating.
Tributes have been flooding in for Jeff Duffield, a British man who was sadly found dead on a beach in Benidorm, just hours after being reported missing while on holiday.Jeff, who lived in Middlesbrough with his wife, had been enjoying a trip to the Spanish resort when he disappeared on Wednesday April 23 at around 12.30pm. His sudden disappearance sparked immediate concern, and his wife took to social media that same day with a heartfelt plea.
“My husband Jeff Duffield has been missing in Benidorm since 12.30 on 23/04/2025,” she wrote in a local Facebook group. “I’ve reported it to police. If anyone sees him please could you contact me, I’m worried sick. Thank you.”
Later that day, a body was discovered on a beach in the city. A National Police spokesperson confirmed the finding but explained that the man could not be formally identified at the time, as he was not carrying any identification.
In the following days, the family received the news they had been dreading. A relative confirmed the tragedy online, writing: “We have unfortunately found out that Jeff has passed away. Thank you for all your lovely comments and please allow my mam the privacy she deserves.”
Police have since stated that they do not suspect foul play and believe Jeff’s death was accidental.
Since the announcement, messages of sympathy have continued to appear online, with many expressing heartbreak over the loss and sending their condolences to Jeff’s loved ones.
Torrevieja City Council has launched a new awareness campaign focused on the proper identification and sterilisation of pets, including dogs, cats and ferrets, as part of its ongoing commitment to animal welfare.
Led by the Department of Animal Protection, the initiative aims to educate pet owners on the importance of microchipping and registering their animals, which significantly increases the likelihood of reuniting with them if they go missing.
Each year, the animal shelter receives hundreds of strays, especially cats, many of which cannot be returned to their homes due to a lack of identification.
The campaign places special focus on ensuring that all cats over six months old are microchipped and sterilised, which is now a legal requirement under the updated Animal Welfare Law. The council points out that taking these simple but essential steps could prevent pets from ending up in one of the many feral feline colonies scattered across the city.
Given Torrevieja’s large international population and the steady stream of tourists who travel with animals, authorities are also reminding non-resident pet owners that all pets must be registered in the Valencian Community’s RIVIA database. This ensures that if a pet becomes lost, the correct contact information is available to help return them quickly and safely.
The message is already reaching the public, with campaign materials now displayed on billboards, digital panels, veterinary clinics, pet stores and council offices across the city.
Andalucía
One story to emerge from the whole blackout episode in Andalucía was that of one young British woman and a hotel receptionist in Málaga, who will remember this Monday as the day a life was saved in the most extraordinary of circumstances.At the Puente Real Hotel in Torremolinos, 40-year-old receptionist Arturo had barely been in the job for a month when a heavily pregnant British tourist appeared at the front desk in severe pain. She was just 30 weeks into her pregnancy and clearly in distress. With emergency services unreachable due to the blackout, Arturo knew he couldn’t wait.
Drawing on his first aid training, he helped deliver the baby right there outside the hotel. When the child was born, he wasn’t breathing. But Arturo didn’t give up. He performed CPR, cut the umbilical cord himself and managed to bring the baby back to life before paramedics finally arrived.
The baby boy is now stable in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Málaga Maternal Hospital, and the mother is doing well. It was a moment of light in an otherwise, literally, dark day.
Sadly, not every story this week had such a happy ending. Also in Torremolinos, and also on Monday, a family holiday took a devastating turn when an Irish man drowned in front of his young son.
The man, named as Darren and believed to be in his fifties, had travelled to Spain with his son and the boy’s grandmother. The trip was meant to offer a bit of healing following the death of the boy’s mother just six weeks earlier. But disaster struck as the blackout knocked out phone networks, leaving bystanders unable to call for help.
Darren had gone into the sea during the afternoon despite rough conditions and strong currents, and with no lifeguards on duty at this point in the season, the danger was all too real. Witnesses described how several people jumped in to try and save him, including Dutch tourist Menno van Oorschot, who later wrote on social media about the traumatic experience.
“Along with several others, we managed to get the man back to the beach and began resuscitation. Sadly, all our efforts were in vain. The man died,” he wrote.
“What struck me most was that the man we pulled from the water was on vacation with his son and grandmother, trying to process the loss of the boy’s mother… now the father has also passed away, and that touches me deeply.”
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed it is aware of the case and is offering support to the family.
And finally, police in Málaga have launched a full-scale animal abuse investigation after discovering a staggering 42 pets living in appalling conditions inside a private home.
The woman at the centre of the case, aged 53, had allegedly been hoarding animals in a property in Cortijo Alto, a neighbourhood in the Teatinos district of the city. The house had no running water, no electricity and no furniture. Officers from the Nature Protection Group (Gruprona) forced entry after years of stonewalling from the resident, who had repeatedly refused access to community social services since 2019.
Inside, they found 33 dogs and 9 cats, many of which showed signs of neglect. None had identification microchips, now legally required in Spain, and some were suffering from wounds, hair loss, mobility issues and malnutrition. One dog was found dead on the property.
All of the animals were seized and taken to the Municipal Animal Protection Centre, where they are now receiving the care they need. Some have been placed in foster homes, while others remain at the shelter.
The woman is facing a long list of charges, including failure to provide proper food, lack of vaccinations, no veterinary care and keeping an excessive number of unsterilised animals without a licence. Investigators have already concluded that she is not fit to keep animals.
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That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading and we’ll be back next week
Bye!
