Madrid / Lisbon, Jul 24 (EFE) .- A failure in a high voltage line in France left hundreds of thousands of homes in Spain and Portugal without electricity this Saturday, where the supply has already been restored.
“An incident with a seaplane has generated a problem in the French very high voltage network causing the temporary disconnection of the peninsula from the rest of Europe,” explained Red Eléctrica de España through Twitter.
The company added that “the problem has already been solved, with the interconnection and the affected power supply being replaced” in Spain, after the failure that occurred in a “very high voltage 400,000 volt” line.
The Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition reported on Twitter that “the interconnection with France and the electricity supply in the affected places” were restored, after a “joint work” between this department, Red Eléctrica de España and distribution companies, so that the problem was resolved “in less than an hour”.
Around 17:00 local time (13:00 GMT) the social networks began to alert of the incident and at that same time the switchboards of the main Spanish electricity companies were also overwhelmed by the barrage of calls from affected users.
At the same time, the emergency services also echoed the blackout, which was one of the largest of this type in recent years in the country.
The power cuts lasted around 45 minutes, during which time many homes in Spain were left without electricity, mainly in the regions of Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, which are the most populated in the country, Aragon, Navarra, the Basque Country, and Castile. and León, Extremadura and Murcia.
Civil Protection of Catalonia (northeast) assured that the cut came to affect some 640,000 clients in this region, who later recovered the service.
On the other hand, sources from the Madrid Emergency Service (center) told Efe that the blackout was “anecdotal” in the region, since the cuts were “very intermittent and of a few minutes”, so they did not generate incidents in the traffic or hospitals.
