Electricity blackout in the Iberian Peninsula and some areas of southern France on April 28, 2025
The largest power blackout in Iberian Peninsula history cut electricity to mainland Spain and Portugal for up to ten hours, disrupting transport, communications, and emergency services.
Key Facts
- Date and time
- 28 April 2025, 12:33 CEST
- Total disconnected load
- 31 GW
- Outage duration (most areas)
- approximately 10 hours
- Reported deaths (Spain)
- at least 7 people
- Reported deaths (Portugal)
- at least 1 person
- Areas affected
- Mainland Spain, mainland Portugal, Andorra, SW France
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Problems were reported with the European synchronous electricity grid, triggering a cascading failure. The precise technical origin of the fault had not been definitively established at the time of reporting, but the sudden loss of 31 GW of load across the interconnected grid points to a large-scale synchronisation or generation imbalance event.
At 12:33 CEST on 28 April 2025, a major power blackout struck the entire Iberian Peninsula, cutting electricity to mainland Spain and Portugal for approximately ten hours and longer in some areas. Minor, brief outages also affected Andorra and parts of southwestern France. Traffic lights failed across many cities and metro lines were evacuated.
The blackout caused severe disruption to telecommunications, transport, and emergency services. At least eight people across Spain and Portugal are believed to have died from outage-related causes, including candle fires and generator exhaust fume inhalation, highlighting the life-threatening impact of prolonged large-scale power loss on modern infrastructure.