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Blackout in Spain and Portugal
ken_shabby
Posts: 6,319
Weird day yesterday as the lights went out at 12.30, as did any sort of information on the mobile phone.
What looked like a minor inconvenience spiralled. The o ly information was in the car radio, when I found out at 2pm it was the whole of Spain and Portugal plunged into chaos. Losing traffic lights in the major cities ground them to a halt, the train lines were all knocked out, and people were trapped on high speed trains that had no speed at all. And through it all, no real idea what was happening.
We were told that the system.would come back in between 6 and 10bhours and effectively that was what happened, as the places near the French border started getting electric from France and the effect spread.
But the trains are still out in Catalunya, and there's still no explanation in the offing.
For anyone who saw the film Leave The World Behind, we had a brief taste yesterday.
What looked like a minor inconvenience spiralled. The o ly information was in the car radio, when I found out at 2pm it was the whole of Spain and Portugal plunged into chaos. Losing traffic lights in the major cities ground them to a halt, the train lines were all knocked out, and people were trapped on high speed trains that had no speed at all. And through it all, no real idea what was happening.
We were told that the system.would come back in between 6 and 10bhours and effectively that was what happened, as the places near the French border started getting electric from France and the effect spread.
But the trains are still out in Catalunya, and there's still no explanation in the offing.
For anyone who saw the film Leave The World Behind, we had a brief taste yesterday.
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Hope you get back to normal ASAP, Ken.0
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I'm in Tenerife and we weren't affected until about 9pm last night, when the Internet went down for several hours. The power stayed on throughout though.0
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Not unusual for the electricity to go off occasionally down here near Malaga but having no phone signal or mobile data as well was a bit disconcerting.
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Ken, sounds like absolutely carnage, sorry to hear it, what the mood in the country, do you think it s some sort of attack from another country?
I know the press are reporting it as something, I wonder if this will happen in different countries, hope Charlton Life have got back up servers!0 -
There was some chatter about this in security channels I'm in yesterday, but looks like it was atmospheric conditions, which caused sync failures between equipment and that cascaded through the grid (infra is shared between countries) and overwhelmed capacity, with 'resilient' solutions being unable to cope.
I expect the company I mentioned a while back on here who provide services & consult on grid resiliency/storage will be put on a hell of a day rate to provide advice on ensuring this doesn't happen again 🤣0 -
The 'atmouspheric' reason was one I heard yesterday. No idea how that works but wiser people than me seemed to see it as possible.
Word on the street yesterday afternoon was a cyber attack, but nobody I've heard has given that any credence.
We were in a small town so apart from lack of information and hot food, the major inconvenience was living by candlelight. But it did show how utterly useless our house is when the current is gone.0 -
The same thing happened when I was in Santiago on earlier this year. The whole country was without electricity for about 10 hours. Is this a coincidence or someone is playing games 🤔
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w182z9868o.amp
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The recent Chinese videos highlighting the difference in infrastructure there to the US made me think of how the ‘old world’ is at such a disadvantage in having modernised earlier.I really hope the worst that comes of the current state of the world is that the old guard (especially the UK) wake up to the vulnerabilities baked in through years of a low threat environment.Hope all our expats experiencing issues don’t have to for long.1
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Another ‘Grayzone’ warning from the people who hate us - and no I don’t believe the earth is square!1
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m_2 said:Another ‘Grayzone’ warning from the people who hate us - and no I don’t believe the earth is square!
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It's a coincidence.Solidgone said:The same thing happened when I was in Santiago on earlier this year. The whole country was without electricity for about 10 hours. Is this a coincidence or someone is playing games 🤔
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w182z9868o.amp
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I am also currently staying in Tenerife.Simonsen said:I'm in Tenerife and we weren't affected until about 9pm last night, when the Internet went down for several hours. The power stayed on throughout though.
As far as I know our internet worked all evening.0 -
Can safely say that i would be absolutely fine in such a situation, as my wife has about 34674635 candlesken_shabby said:The 'atmouspheric' reason was one I heard yesterday. No idea how that works but wiser people than me seemed to see it as possible.
Word on the street yesterday afternoon was a cyber attack, but nobody I've heard has given that any credence.
We were in a small town so apart from lack of information and hot food, the major inconvenience was living by candlelight. But it did show how utterly useless our house is when the current is gone.21 -
Friend in Spain had 14 hours without power, 8 without water and no phone signal throughout.0
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Strange day indeed here in Portugal. Sods law saw us with little to no food in the house when the power went off and what food we had needed cooking but we are all electric except the hot water.
We lost our internet so did not realise until well in to the afternoon from our neighbour how bad the situation was. My wife went straight out to grab some shopping but all the large supermarkets were shut and the one smaller shop that had stayed open could only accept cash but we only had 2 euros on us! Went to the cash machines but they were all shut down so my wife picked up two hotdog type rolls which was all we could afford! We had a little cheese in the fridge and had that with some jam in the rolls.
By 8pm and with no candles, we were sat in the pitch black starving, two phones with no juice left, no internet and wondering what the hell we were going to do the following day! Then thankfully at 21:30 everything pinged back on.
I think I will put together a little survival kit in case of any repeat power outages!
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I could do with a powercut or two to lose a few pounds. Bring on net zero!2
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So, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has not ruled out that the blackout was caused by a cyber attack.
I would be surprised if it wasn't.0 -
superclive98 said:So, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has not ruled out that the blackout was caused by a cyber attack.
I would be surprised if it wasn't.
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On the Costa del Sol and we were out for 15 hours. Restaurants and super markets closed although the odd one open for cash only.
Fortunately we had bacon,eggs, tomatoes and bread plus a gas cooker oh, and 2 litres of Sangria so survived.2 -
I would be equally surprised if it was. These are big stakes to play with - not a move any state would undertake without it being seen as a material escalation.superclive98 said:So, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has not ruled out that the blackout was caused by a cyber attack.
I would be surprised if it wasn't.2 -
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I thought this thread would be stories about boys holidays on the late 1990’s5
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It wasn't. There would be multiple IOCs (Indicators Of Compromise) immediately if it wassuperclive98 said:So, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has not ruled out that the blackout was caused by a cyber attack.
I would be surprised if it wasn't.
He's got to say this because investigations into events like this are extremely complex and take a lot of time. You don't rule anything out a day after it happened, and it's political suicide for him to say 'we didn't spend enough money on it, or do enough DR testing' while people are still feeling rhe knock on effects
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I’m in Fuerteventura and lost internet for 3-4 hours last night - WiFi on but no server connection…probably mainland based.Billericaydickie said:
I am also currently staying in Tenerife.Simonsen said:I'm in Tenerife and we weren't affected until about 9pm last night, when the Internet went down for several hours. The power stayed on throughout though.
As far as I know our internet worked all evening.0 -
It's really strange because the lights flickered in my house last night and my Virgin Media box switched itself off.
Of course, you may say that's all just a coincidence and these things happen, but you wont convince me it wasn't the Russians trying to interrupt my viewing of New Tricks. Or the Chinese. Or aliens.2 -
Or just the taste and decency fairies. New Tricks!?Off_it said:It's really strange because the lights flickered in my house last night and my Virgin Media box switched itself off.
Of course, you may say that's all just a coincidence and these things happen, but you wont convince me it wasn't the Russians trying to interrupt my viewing of New Tricks. Or the Chinese. Or aliens.0 -
Against NATO members too, an attack of that scale may risk triggering article 5. It doesn’t have to be a state actor of course.SporadicAddick said:
I would be equally surprised if it was. These are big stakes to play with - not a move any state would undertake without it being seen as a material escalation.superclive98 said:So, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has not ruled out that the blackout was caused by a cyber attack.
I would be surprised if it wasn't.0 -
Will this be the boost required against a cash less world?3
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Amanda Redman!Super_Eddie_Youds said:
Or just the taste and decency fairies. New Tricks!?Off_it said:It's really strange because the lights flickered in my house last night and my Virgin Media box switched itself off.
Of course, you may say that's all just a coincidence and these things happen, but you wont convince me it wasn't the Russians trying to interrupt my viewing of New Tricks. Or the Chinese. Or aliens.0 -
It did make it clear (as they've said on the news this morning) that it's a good idea yo have cash for emergencies. I was in a supermarket buying candles on Monday and heard the cashier telling people they did take card payments. They obviously had a generator, as the lights were on, but I think that was a bit of an outlier. Most shops snd bars had no lights on, and worked on cash only.Starinnaddick said:Will this be the boost required against a cash less world?1 -
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