A major blackout struck Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France on Monday, April 28th. The power outage disrupted key infrastructure, including trains, traffic lights, and telecommunications. Life across the Iberian Peninsula has largely come to a standstill, with people anxiously waiting for the electricity to be restored after what officials are calling a historic system failure.
Speculation about the cause of the blackout quickly spread. Responding to the rumors, EU Council head Antonio Costa said, “At this point, there are no indications of any cyberattack.” He added, “Grid operators in both countries are working on finding the cause, and on restoring the electricity supply.”
Portuguese electricity operator REN said, “At this time it is still impossible to predict when the situation will be normalized,” but promised that “all resources [are] deployed” to fix the problem.
Meanwhile, MCC Brussels, a conservative think tank, has begun investigating the root cause of the outage. In a post on X, MCC said, “Elites said the sun and the wind would provide energy security. They were wrong.”
Citing one of their previous studies, MCC researchers argued that modern society depends on energy more than anything else, calling widespread access to energy “the most impressive achievement of the modern world.” However, they warned that this achievement carries the heavy responsibility of maintaining strong, reliable energy systems. MCC claims that the EU’s energy system is now “infected by politicized goals.”
