Spain’s top security and defense officials met on Wednesday to discuss the blackout on the Iberian Peninsula this week, which halted critical infrastructure for up to 18 hours in some areas.
The authorities in Spain and Portugal are scrambling to determine what caused the power grid to shut down.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain met with National Security Council officials in Madrid, and Spain’s Council of Ministers held a separate meeting focused on the outage. The Spanish government has asked European regulators, as well as Spain’s ministry of ecological transition, Spanish security officials and Spain’s national grid operator, to investigate the incident.
The blackout, which began on Monday afternoon, disrupted daily life in Spain and Portugal until electricity was restored on Tuesday morning. Parts of France were also briefly affected.
The incident has raised questions about whether Spain’s rapid shift to renewable energy left it more vulnerable to outages, though Spanish officials have so far denied any connection. Beatriz Corredor, the chairwoman of Red Eléctrica, Spain’s power company, told the Spanish radio network Cadena SER on Wednesday that it was “not correct to link the incident to renewable energy.”
Red Eléctrica said there was no evidence of a cyberattack on the transmission grid, but Spanish officials were still investigating whether it was a possibility.
A judge on Tuesday ordered Red Eléctrica, the intelligence service and the police to produce reports within 10 days about whether a cyberattack was behind the power outage, according to a court document. The National Cryptologic Center, which oversees cyberthreats, was also reviewing Red Eléctrica’s online systems to “ensure no hypothesis is ruled out,” Mr. Sánchez said.
After power was restored, Spain’s Interior Ministry on Tuesday downgraded many regions from the highest of three alert levels to a medium one.
Madrid and the western region of Extremadura remained at the highest level on Wednesday, the ministry said.
In Portugal, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said after an emergency government meeting on Tuesday that the outage was related to an abrupt increase in voltage in the Spanish electricity grid, which activated safety mechanisms that led to the blackout.
“We will calmly assess with the Spanish authorities what happened and try to design better response instruments in the future to avoid a repeat of this occurrence,” he said.
The outage is expected to be a key topic during a debate on Wednesday between Mr. Montenegro and the opposition leader, Pedro Nuno Santos, ahead of a parliamentary election on May 18. The two had originally been scheduled to debate on Monday.
Tiago Carrasco contributed reporting from Lisbon.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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