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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asked for patience on Wednesday, as mounting pressure surrounds his administration to explain the cause of last week’s power outage that brought much of the Iberian Peninsula to a standstill.
The widespread outage on 28 April disrupted internet and telephone services, halted railway operations, forced businesses to close, and plunged numerous cities across Spain and Portugal into darkness. Even southwestern France experienced brief impacts.
While intense discussion continues in Spain regarding the blackout’s origins, authorities have yet to reach a definitive conclusion. Officials are currently reviewing vast amounts of data from electricity providers and the national grid operator.
‘The process will take its time because we will have to examine meticulously around 756 million pieces of data,’ Sánchez told MPs in the Spanish Congress on Wednesday, assuring that his government is determined to ‘get to the bottom of the matter’.
‘Citizens want to know what happened … what we will not do is prematurely close any debate. We will not rush to conclusions,’ he added.
The prime minister noted that initial technical findings suggest three separate incidents took place in southern Spain on 28 April, with the final one leading to the collapse of the power grid.
Previously released official data had pointed to two closely timed incidents – only five seconds apart – that caused a loss in power output equivalent to 60% of Spain’s electricity use at that moment.
Spain’s right-wing and far-right opposition parties have seized on the incident to criticise the PSOE socialist-led coalition, blaming its transition away from nuclear power and toward renewable energy for increasing the country’s vulnerability to such failures. ALSO READ: Spain’s opposition parties blame PM’s renewable energy policies for blackout.
However, Sánchez maintains that there is ‘no empirical evidence’ to support claims that ‘an excess of renewables or the lack of nuclear power plants’ triggered the outage.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused Sánchez of showing ‘arrogance’ and warned that his People’s Party (PP) would not let the issue fade ‘without resignations’.
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ALSO READ: Spanish government says ‘several more days’ needed to pinpoint cause of blackout.
ALSO READ: Spain’s high court to open investigation as to possible cyberattack, as business sector counts cost.
Los técnicos necesitarán tiempo de investigación y análisis.
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) May 7, 2025
Mientras, los que acusan al Gobierno de no dar aún con la causa del apagón han vendido su espíritu crítico a un buen pagador.
Desconfíen de quienes les dicen que esto va de renovables contra nucleares. No es así. pic.twitter.com/YTpPtyUwrp
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