Generalized energy cuts changed life during millions in Spain and Portugal, and, for letters, parts of France, Monday.
The traffic lights darkened at occupied intersections. The trains stopped in the middle of a working day. And long lines formed in ATMs and groceries, where credit card readers stopped working.
For Tuesday morning, the interruptions had ended mostly, but their cause was still under investigation.
This is what we know.
Power has been mainly restored to the region.
The National Electric Company of Spain said on Tuesday that almost all energy demand in peninsular Spain had been with 6 am
Portugal’s electricity and gas supplier said that energy had been restored to all its substations on Monday night.
The operator of the electricity grid in France, where the interruption briefly affected households in the Basque region, said that all energy had been restored.
The cause remains under investigation.
The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, said that officials were still investigating the causes of the interruption.
The National Electric Company of Spain, Red Electric, said Tuesday morning that he had ruled out a cyber attack or weather causes, and that human error was unlikely.
The National Energy Supplier of Portugal, E-Redes, cited a “problem not specified in the European Electricity.”
António Leitão Amaro, a senior Portuguese government official, also said there was no evidence of a cyber attack. Ren denied reports that an un specified “atmospheric phenomenon” was the culprit.
Hospitals, banks and trips were interrupted.
Duration of interruptions, there were broad problems to connect to the Internet and telephone networks in Spain and Portugal. Mr. Sánchez urged people to make only letter calls to their cell phones.
The hospitals in Spain were forced to postulate with generators. Portuguese banks and schools closed. The National Railway Company of Spain said the trains had stopped working at all stations. They stopped the subway in several cities, including Valencia and Madrid. The Madrid Tennis Tournament was suspended. And people got into stores to buy food and other essential elements, since employees used pencil and paper to record transactions only in cash.
Diana Alfia, an employee of a shelter in Lisbon, said that some people had gone to the beach since there was not much more to do, and some tourists walked miles from the airport to the city because Uber and public transport were not Aviabale.
The power went in the midst of high temperatures.
According to Spain’s weather agency, Aemet, temperatures throughout the country were between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of energy interruptions. At the end of the day, the maximums had risen between 82 and 87 degrees.
That was higher than usual: in April, temperatures in Spain average around 64 degrees in the central and northern regions and approximately 70 degrees in the south.
When asked if the interruptions were connected to the heat, Bruno Silva, a spokesman for Ren, was skeptical. “No, I hope no,” he said.
Other European interruptions have stopped daily life.
More than 50 million people in Italy were in the dark for almost a full day in 2003 after a line between Switzerland and Italy was overloaded. He was considered the worst day of blackout in the country since World War II.
In 2006, 10 million people in Germany were letters without power after the northwest part of the country’s electricity network was overloaded.
And last year, much of the balances was without energy for several hours of a heat wave in which temperatures rose to 40 degrees Celsius, or more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Electrical networks in Europe are interconnected, and an overload or problem in one area can be extended to another country.
Nazaneen Ghaffar” Mike Iives and John Yoon Contributed reports.
