How to break the power supply in Spain and Portugal

The first sign of trouble Peter Hughes noticed was when his train to Madrid began to slow down.

Then the television monitor and the lights went out. The emergency lights turned on, but they did not stand, and the locomotive land stopped.

Four hours later, Hughes was still stuck on the train 200 kilometers (124 miles) outside the capital of Spain. He had food and water, but the toilets did not work.

“We will get dark soon and we could get stuck here for hours,” he told the BBC.

The mass slicing of power that was pounding, Hughes triggered chaos in Spain and Portugal, and also influenced Andorra and parts of France, from about lunch local time (10:00 GMT).

The traffic lights are switched off. Metros closed. The business closed and people joined the queues to get money as card payments don't work.

Jonathan Emery was on a different train halfway between Seville and Madrid when the cuts hit.

For an hour he was sitting on the train, the doors closed until people could open them to release ventilation. Half an hour later, passengers left, just to find themselves stuck.

Then the people from the local villages began to come and release deliveries – water, bread, fruits.

“No one is charging for anything and the word must be surrounded in the local city because people just continue to come,” he said.

In Madrid, Hannah Lawney was halfway through scanning grocery shopping in Aldi when the Force came out.

People went out of their offices and were going home because they couldn't understand when the buses were coming, said G -Lowney in a voice message sent to the BBC Radio 5 live.

“It is a little disturbing that this is the whole country, I have never experienced it before,” she said.

Mark England was eating lunch at the hotel restaurant, where he stayed on vacation in Benidorm when “everything went out and the fire alarm began to withdraw and the doors of the fire began to close.”

At the Lisbon International School, electricity blinked and excluded for a while, after which he gave up, said teacher Emily Torogud.

She continued to teach in the dark, the children in a good mood, but many parents brought their children out of school, she said.

Will David, a Briton living in Lisbon, had a haircut and haircut in the Barber basement when the Force descended. The barber finds him a place by the window above to finish the cut with scissors.

“The walk at home felt very strange, as with the lack of traffic lights, which means complete free for all vehicles and pedestrians on the roads-as and so many people who merge outside their work seats without what to do,” he said.

Initially, mobile telephone networks also descended for some, leaving very fast for information.

Curtis gladon, who is in La Vall d'Iixo, about 30 miles from Valencia, said he was “scary” while struggling to get updates on what was happening.

Eloise Edgington, who could not do any work as a copywriter in Barcelona, ​​said he was receiving only random messages, could not charge web pages on his phone and tried to keep his battery.

An hour and a half after the power supply, a resident of Fortuna, in southeastern Spain, said her husband was moving around, trying to find a gas station that could deliver fuel to manage a generator and keep his fridge.

“We are worried about food, water, money and gasoline if it lasts for several days,” says Leslie, a Briton who has lived in Spain for 11 years.

The locals “have more to worry” than the Madrid Tennis Tennis tournament has been stopped, she said, adding that there is “very little news about what happened.”

In England, he said that walking down the street in Benidorm, “the greater part of the stores are in darkness and closed or people at the entrances who say you can't enter. There are no money, no traffic lights, so it's weird.”

After the telephone signal of G -H Gladadon returned in about two hours, he and others dareed to cafes, but found that “nothing works – we came to take food and drink, but they could not cook without electricity.”

Within two hours, the Spanish electricity network operator Red Electrica said it was beginning to restore power north and south of the country.

But two and a half hours after the cuts, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almaida still calls on all residents to “keep their movements to an absolute minimum and, if possible, to stay where they are,” in a video recorded by the integrated emergency center in the city.

At 15:00 local time, Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gathered an “unusual” meeting of the Spanish National Security Council.

Red Electrica Executive Director Eduardo, adopted, told a press conference shortly thereafter that it could take “between six and ten hours” to restore power.

Shortly before 4:00 pm the electricity returned to Malaga again. At 5:00 pm, the network operator said the power was restored “in several areas to the north, south and west of the (Iberian) peninsula.”

Portugal's power company Ren gave a more sense of forecast, saying it could “take up to a week” before the network returned to normal.

Knock on the effects: the airport reserve generators started, allowing most flights to leave on time, but some failed to work.

Tom McGilouay, on vacation in Lisbon, had to return to London on Monday night, but she didn't know what was going to happen from early night.

For now, he said people were receiving drinks and food – but the sellers told him that they would be able to continue to work until the batteries run out of their payment terminals.

“If I have to book a hotel, if the aircraft is canceled, I don't know how I can do it if payments decrease,” he added.

“My partner's parents are trying to get gasoline so they can take us to get us back to Aleteho, but many gas stations are closed or not take a payment. We may be left without a plan where to stay tonight.”

Additional reporting and research by Andre Masaya, Chris Bramwell, James Kelly, Bernadett McCag, Josh Pari and Naga Muncheti