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ELECTRICITY

How would Spain react if there was a major blackout?

Doomsday series and fake news have made the prospect of a national and Europe-wide outage seem outlandish, and yet we come close to such a critical event. How would Spanish authorities react if there was a days-long power cut?

Published: 28 June 2024 12:48 CEST
blackout spain
There is no nationwide action plan available if Spain were to be hit bit a major blackout. Photo: Paul Torres/Unsplash

In January, 2021, a technical fault at an electricity plant in Croatia almost knocked out Europe’s entire power grid.

In 2003, 56 million people were left without electricity for several hours in Italy and Switzerland, but there have been outages that have affected far more people and lasted longer, such as the 2012 India blackouts that cut off the supply of electricity for two days to 620 million people. 

Even the entire island of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands has been hit by two major outages in recent years.

Sri Lanka, Turkey, Zanzibar, Brazil, Pakistan, Venezuela – there are countless other blackouts over the past two decades caused by software errors, network overloads, accidents and adverse weather conditions. 

Most feared of all is the prospect of a solar storm so powerful that the grid couldn’t be restored within a matter of hours, days or weeks. 

Such an apocalyptic scenario was depicted in the 2022 Movistar+ series Apagón (Blackout in English), which follows several people in Spain as they survive in a world without electricity.

The prospect of a solar storm setting us back two centuries seems far-fetched and has been exploited and overblown by fake news sources.

A geomagnetic storm caused by a solar storm did cause a nine-hour outage in Quebec in 1989, meaning that it isn’t impossible but by no means as permanent a blackout as some doomsdayers fear. 

However, as the Covid-19 pandemic taught us, even the most unfathomable can sometimes become reality.

So what if this scenario were to hit Spain or the world as a whole?

Spain’s Environment Teresa Ribera flatly ruled out that this could affect Spain and defended that “we can rule it out from our future concerns” despite the fact that Europe’s electricity grid is linked from London all the way to Istanbul.

According to Ribera, the Spanish energy system “is almost an energy island and as we have almost double the installed power than what we use, the risk of a type of blackout due to a system failure in third countries is very limited”.

Madrid authorities are not so convinced by the national government’s stance, and in 2021 called for a nationwide action plan ready to be executed jointly across the regions in the event of a major blackout. 

In 2017, the Spanish Association of Civil Protection for Spatial Weather filed in the Spanish Congress a request to develop a national ‘anti-solar blackout’ plan but this somewhat bizarrely got passed on to the agricultural department and forgotten about. 

They ended up drawing up their own report studying what could be done in all manner of scenarios: accidents at power generation plants, scarcity of essential supplies (food, water, fuel and electricity), and meteorological events. 

After the freak snow storm that brought the Spanish capital to a standstill for several days that very year, it comes as no surprise that Madrid authorities want to be prepared in future.

Protocol measures went from establishing shelters, to a hierarchy of importance in terms of essential services and infrastructure, from the fire service to hospitals.

Specific recommendations for citizens included stocking up on electric generators, batteries, candles, analogue radio receivers and basic foods that do not require cold storage.

But the truth remains that there is no handbook available for Spain’s national government to execute in the event of a major blackout. 

What it has established recently is its SMS alert system, whereby everyone on the country’s phone network receives a message warning them of imminent dangers or risks. 

At this point in time, Spanish authorities simply don’t consider the risk of a major blackout to be worrisome enough to require a detailed action plan. 

The impossibility of Spain being completely off the grid is shared by those in charge of it – Red Eléctrica de España (REE) – but a Europe-wide blackout would undeniably still bring problems to most of the 48 million people living in this country.

READ ALSO: What are the chances of a big earthquake happening in Spain?

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For members

SPANISH LAW

Why Spain’s law to ban spam calls has failed

A year after legislation was passed to prevent companies making unwanted spam calls to people (including steep fines for offenders) many in Spain are still receiving them.

Published: 2 July 2024 09:24 CEST
Why Spain's law to ban spam calls has failed

A year has passed since the Spanish government brought in legislation to try and stop spam calls, but for many in Spain these infuriating marketing and advertising cold calls continue.

“The reality is that calls are just as if not more intense than before this regulation,” Samuel Parra, a technology law specialist, said recently in the Spanish press.

Data from Spain’s main consumer watchdog, Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios (OCU), backs this up. It reports that nine out of ten consumers in Spain continue to receive these spam calls despite the change in the law.

READ ALSO: Spain’s ban on spam calls to come into force on June 29th

Facua, another consumer group, reports that 4.1 percent of people still receive more than five calls a month, 8.2 percent receive four, 12.5 percent receive three, and 9.7 percent receive at least two.

The main objective of the Telecommunications Law, passed in June 2023, was to stop the abundance of spam calls, which in Spain are particularly bad and are usually commercial sales calls trying to sell you something. However, the reality is that, after being in force for a year, many Spaniards are still receiving these sorts of spam calls.

Almudena Velázquez, a consumer affairs lawyer, told Spanish state broadcaster TVE that companies bypass (and at times break) the law by using a so-called ‘legitimate interest’ that allows companies to offer similar products to those the consumer already has.

For example, if you’ve recently taken out a loan, they could reasonably try and sell you a credit card via a cold call.

Experts say this due to companies exploiting data protection rules. Specifically, Article 6 of Spain’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows for the use of personal data, such as telephone numbers, when there is a justifiable ‘legitimate interest’ of the company.

Ileana Izvernicveanu, spokesperson for the OCU, described this concept as a “no man’s land”. In other words, spam phone call companies are exploiting a legal grey area in order to continue with their sales calls.

Another possible explanation, the OCU warns, is that consumers themselves have unwillingly or unknowingly consented to receive these spam calls by giving away their personal data through other means, whether online or when purchasing products.

You can remove your consent by registering on the Robinson List, a free advertising exclusion system in Spain.

Spain’s Telecommunications Law also pledged to open legal proceedings against any company which makes spam calls, regardless of whether the call centre is based in Spain or overseas. It’s unclear if this has happened yet.

Other legislation introduced in 2022 also prohibited cold calling before 9am and after 9m, as well as at weekends or on public holidays. Spain’s main phone and internet providers also committed to not calling phone users between 3pm and 4pm, ‘siesta time’ in Spain.

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