The Audiencia Nacional, the Madrid court that hears the most serious cases, including terrorism, has announced the opening of an investigation to determine whether the blackout that has sown chaos in the country was caused by "computer sabotage."

"The National Court Judge, José Luis Calama, has opened a preliminary investigation to determine whether the blackout that hit the Spanish electricity grid yesterday, affecting the entire country, could be an act of computer sabotage against Spanish critical infrastructures and, if so, could be classified as a terrorist crime," a statement reads.

Hacker attack excluded

However, the hypothesis of a cyber attack has been ruled out by the Spanish Electricity Network (REE): "There has in fact not been any type of incursion into the control systems that could have caused the incident," clarified Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at REE, at a press conference.

"From the analyses we have been able to carry out up to this point, we can exclude a cyber security incident in the installations and control system of Rete Elettrica," he explained.

The operator assured that "we are analyzing the two disconnections that occurred initially", a few seconds before the blackout, in particular, the second one that triggered the system's fall to 'zero'. "We will have to analyze why the two disconnections occurred, the second one in particular that led to the degradation and collapse of the system", he reported. "We will have to verify the causes, analyze the power, the location, the conditions in which the disconnection occurred", he added.

Petro declined to "speculate" on where the power outage occurred, when asked whether it was in an area powered by renewable energy plants.

Commission of Inquiry

Meanwhile in Spain the situation has returned to normal and Pedro Sanchez has announced the launch of a commission of inquiry.

"All necessary measures will be taken to ensure that this does not happen again," the prime minister also assured, saying that he would call "private operators in the electricity sector to account for their responsibilities."

Sanchez also responded to attacks from the far-right party Vox, which claimed that the blackout was linked to the lack of nuclear power in Spain: "Nuclear production has not been more resilient than other sources of electricity in the face of the mass blackout. Anyone who links this incident to the lack of nuclear power is either lying through their teeth or demonstrating their ignorance."

What happened

The power outage that hit the Iberian Peninsula on Monday affected tens of millions of homes and businesses, causing chaos for several hours. Circumstances, origins, consequences.

The outage began at 12:33 in Spain and at 11:33 in Portugal. It affected the entire Iberian Peninsula, or about 55 million people, as well as several localities in the French Basque Country, a region bordering Spain. In Spain, only the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and the territories of Ceuta and Melilla, on the northern coast of Africa, were spared. These regions have little or no electricity connections to the peninsula and operate independently.

This mega blackout caused chaos in both Portugal and Spain, where residents were left without electricity, internet and mobile phones. Traffic jams formed in large cities, as traffic lights stopped working. The outage also brought the metro and all rail traffic to a halt. In Spain, authorities had to rescue more than 35,000 passengers stranded on 116 trains, some of them for more than ten hours. Air traffic was also affected, but to a lesser extent, as airports, like hospitals, have emergency generators.

Why such a long blackout? In France, the electricity grid operator RTE quickly restored power. But in Spain and Portugal, the restoration of the electricity system was much slower: residents often had to wait 10 or even 20 hours for electricity. One explanation is the scale of the blackout, which, according to the Spanish grid operator (REE), began with a “strong oscillation of power flows” on the electricity grid, “accompanied by a very significant loss of production,” a phenomenon described as “absolutely extraordinary.”

“This loss of production exceeded the reference disturbance for which the electricity systems are designed” and caused “a disconnection of the peninsular electricity system” from the rest of the EU, with the Spanish grid “collapse” within five seconds, followed by the Portuguese grid, according to REE.

(Online Union)

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