A partial disruption in the fixed telephone and internet services of Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica caused outages in emergency service numbers for several hours on Tuesday, marking another incident involving the nation’s critical infrastructure.
Emergency service agencies in regions including Aragón, Galicia, Extremadura, Andalusia and Valencia took to social media around 9am to alert the public that the essential 112 emergency number was not operational.
The outage also impacted landline and internet access for individuals, companies and institutions across affected areas.
Telefónica attributed the issue to ‘upgrade works on the network’, which led to interruptions in ‘the fixed communications services of some companies and public services’, noting that services were ‘restored completely’ by 12.30pm.
The company stated that its incident management committee took charge of the situation, identifying the specific faults and dispatching field teams to quickly address the problem.
Throughout the interruption, authorities in several regions provided alternative emergency numbers to maintain access to critical services. These have since been reverted to the standard 112 number.
This latest disruption follows a major blackout three weeks ago, the cause of which remains unknown, that threw Spain and Portugal into turmoil and reignited concerns about the resilience of the power grid. ALSO READ: Spanish government rules out that a cyberattack caused nationwide blackout.
Just a week after that event, the theft of copper wiring from a high-speed rail line linking Madrid to Seville caused significant travel disruption, halting train services and stranding over 10,000 passengers. ALSO READ: Thousands of rail passengers experience severe delays after copper cable theft.
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Información para clientes – Sergio Sánchez, director de Operaciones, Redes y TI de Telefónica España, explica la incidencia, ya resuelta, que ha afectado esta mañana a las comunicaciones fijas de algunas empresas y servicios públicos pic.twitter.com/Y6dcptM5mu
— Movistar España (@movistar_es) May 20, 2025
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