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As the fallout from the power outage on Monday in Spain continues, the minority coalition government led by socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is facing accusations from the right-wing and far-right opposition parties that its renewable energy polices are to blame.
Spain is a leader in solar and wind power generation, with more than half of its energy last year having come from renewable sources. Portugal also generates a majority of its energy from renewable sources.
Both countries suffered a huge power outage that began just after 12.30pm on Monday, lasting well into the night. At least five people are believed to have died in Spain as a result of the blackout, which left people trapped on trains, metros, and in the lifts of apartment blocks and offices. ALSO READ: Spain’s power supply almost fully restored after one of EU’s worst blackouts.
Spain’s High Court has said it will be investigating to find out the cause, although authorities in Spain and Portugal have downplayed the idea that a cyberattack was responsible. ALSO READ: Spain’s high court to open investigation as to possible cyberattack, as business sector counts cost.
Sánchez has called on private energy operators to help his government establish the cause of the blackout, and said changes and improvements must be made to guarantee ‘the supply and future competitiveness’ of the country’s electrical system. He has also said that his government is refusing to rule out ‘any hypothesis’ as to the cause.
The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, has also called for an independent inquiry, saying his government will ask the EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to perform ‘an independent audit of the electrical systems of the affected countries to fully determine the causes of this situation’.
On Tuesday evening, Sánchez summoned private energy operators (main image) – including the president of the national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, and representatives of Iberdrola, Endesa, EDP, Acciona Energía and Naturgy – to an urgent meeting to discuss the blackout.
The prime minister also announced the creation of a commission to investigate the incident and to look at the role of private energy companies.
He has said that the on-going investigations will focus on what happened at 12.33pm on Monday, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used – suddenly disappeared.
However, Sánchez’s political opponents claim he has pushed ahead with plans to prioritise renewable energy over nuclear energy without thinking of the consequences, and is now trying to blame private energy companies for the blackout.
They claim that Spain’s heavy renewable energy supply may have made its grid system much more susceptible to the type of outage that took place Monday. Reports suggest that non-renewable energy sources, such as coal and natural gas, can better weather the type of fluctuations observed Monday on Spain’s grid.
Spanish media has reported that Red Eléctrica itself had warned only two months ago that the country’s power supply is more fragile because renewables are less constant – less reliable than coal, nuclear and gas plants – and Spain can’t easily ‘borrow’ electricity from abroad if something goes wrong.
Small solar plants, it said, often disconnect too quickly when they sense a problem. ‘The increasing integration of renewable energy sources,’ it warned, ‘presents significant challenges to the stability and security of the electricity system’.
The right-wing People’s Party (PP) and main opposition group has accused the prime minister of waging ‘an information blackout’ over the incident and called for him to appear before the Spanish Congress to give a full account of what he knows about the incident.
‘The government has assumed no responsibility, engaged in no self-criticism and it hasn’t even apologised to the people,’ the PP said on Wednesday morning.
The party has also pointed out that Red Eléctrica’s president, Beatriz Corredor, is a former minister in the last socialist government.
Sánchez has dismissed the criticisms. ‘Those who link this incident to the lack of nuclear power are frankly lying or demonstrating their ignorance,’ he said on Tuesday, adding that nuclear power generation ‘was no more resilient’ than other electricity sources.
The far-right Vox party has also trained its fire on Sánchez, accusing him of a costly ideological aversion to nuclear power, which, it said, had left Spain in the dark.
Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, posted on X (formerly Twitter) against Sánchez: ‘Stop lying so shamelessly. The blackout is down to you and your disastrous energy policies. You said this couldn’t happen … Now that it has happened, you need to go and face the judicial consequences.’
Speaking on national broadcaster RTVE on Wednesday (see link below), Red Eléctrica’s president said of a possible new blackout: ‘Zero risk in a physical system is impossible to rule out. What I can say is that we have the best system in the world.’
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ALSO READ: Portugal’s REN denies claiming Iberian blackout caused by ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’.
ALSO READ: Power blackout affects 60 million people across Spain and Portugal.
He mantenido una reunión de urgencia con los operadores privados del sector eléctrico. Les he agradecido su labor en la pronta recuperación del suministro, y les he pedido que colaboren con el Gobierno y los organismos independientes para identificar las causas del incidente.… pic.twitter.com/IMVzJYcsnQ
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) April 29, 2025
Beatriz Corredor, presidenta de Red Eléctrica, sobre un posible nuevo apagón: “El riesgo cero en un sistema físico es imposible de descartar. Lo que sí digo es que tenemos el mejor sistema del mundo”#Mañaneros30A https://t.co/GXJEXsaXHM pic.twitter.com/hHfeFQvFDM
— RTVE Noticias (@rtvenoticias) April 30, 2025
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