Power blackout on Spanish island

MADRID: A power outage hit the Spanish island of La Palma on Tuesday, six weeks after a major electricity breakdown disrupted the whole country and neighbouring Portugal.

The Spanish emergency service said the Canary Islands regional government had issued an “emergency plan” to deal with the alert.

The service said the Endesa power company had blamed a generator breakdown at Brena Alta on the eastern side of the Atlantic island but had not said when power would be restored.

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The major outage on April 28 saw internet services cut and trains and key infrastructure brought to a halt for several hours across mainland Spain.

on April 28 (Monday), power went out across Spain and Portugal, halting train traffic, clogging roads and trapping people in elevators before electricity started to return to some areas after hours of disruption.

As Spain’s government scrambled to find the cause of the outage, which hit at 12:30 pm (1030 GMT), ordinary people were left in the dark — often literally — as to what was happening.

“People were stunned, because this had never happened in Spain,” Carlos Candori, a 19-year-old construction worker who had to exit the paralysed metro system in Madrid, told AFP.

“There’s no (phone) coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work,” he said.

In Madrid and elsewhere customers rushed to withdraw cash from banks, and streets filled with crowds trying in vain to get a signal on their mobiles. Others were trapped in elevators or inside garages.

As a precaution, play was cancelled at the Madrid Open for the rest of the day.