By Faith Barbara N Ruhinda updated at 1704 EAT on Monday 28 April 2025

Emily Thorowgood, who’s from Bristol but who works as a teacher in an international school in Lisbon,says she  is currently “teaching in the dark” after the power went off at around noon local time.

Lots of parents are taking their children out due to the power cuts, she says.

It was flashing on and off for a long while but seems to have finally given up.

Lesley has lived in Spain for 11 years with her husband. The couple are currently based in Murcia, Spain.

“We are worried about food, water, cash and petrol in case this goes on for a couple of days.”

She says there’s “more to worry about” than the Madrid Open tennis tournament being suspended.

My husband is driving around now trying to find a petrol station that’s open to get petrol for the generator so that we can plug in the fridge.

In the Spanish resort of Benidorm, Mark England tells us how the lack of power has disrupted his holiday.

He says he and his partner Jonnie had gone for lunch when the lights in the dining room started to go off.

There’s still no power. We’re walking down the main street now and the majority of shops are in darkness and shuttered up or have people on the entrances saying you can’t come in.

There’s no cash machines, no traffic lights so it’s strange. It’s kind of bizarre.”

Worst of all, at a holiday destination like Benidorm, Mark says bars are unable to serve drinks because of a lack of power to their pumps.

If you haven’t got a drink, you are out of luck,” he says.

The head of Spain’s electricity grid says restoring power could take hours.

Speaking at a news conference, Red Electrica CEO Eduardo Prieto tells reporters that the operation to solve the issue could take between six and ten hours.

We’ll bring you more on this as soon as we get it.

We’ve now heard from the mayor of Madrid, who’s asking residents to stay put where possible.

“I ask all residents of Madrid to keep their movements to an absolute minimum and, if at all possible, to remain where they are. We want to keep all roads clear,” José Luis Martínez-Almeida says in a video posted on social media.

Speaking from the integrated emergency security centre of Madrid he says that on top of traffic lights being off, tunnels of certain highways have had to be closed.

The mayor also asks residents to only call emergency services if it is truly urgent, “If emergency calls go unanswered, go to the police and the fire stations in person, where they will try to deal with all the emergencies which may present themselves.”

Hannah Lowney, who is from Manchester but lives in Madrid, says she was halfway through scanning her grocery shopping in Aldi when the power went out.

Mobile phone networks have also been hit by the massive power cut.

Reporters for the AFP news agency in Madrid and Barcelona saw people heading into the streets, holding their smartphones up to try to connect to a network.

Many people used the radio, rather than their phones, to get updates, the news agency says.

Portuguese airline TAP Air has warned passengers not to head to airports until further notice.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airline says some services are not operating as usual and asks passengers to await more information.

Parts of France temporarily lost power following the outages in Spain and Portugal, Reuters news agency reports, citing French grid operator RTE.

A spokeswoman for RTE gives no further detail on the extent of the outage, but says that power has now resumed after the brief interruption.

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