‘Shipwrecked in the 21st century': how people made it through Europe's worst blackout in living memory

The Guardian

29-04-2025

The ski lifts, carrying 16 people, dangled high above the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. As parts of Spain and Portugal were plunged into a blackout on Monday, the swaying gondolas had come to a halt metres above the ground, leaving people trapped inside.
About four hours later, video posted online by the ski station showed a rescuer lowering themselves into a gondola to set up a system of ropes that allowed the skiers to rappel to the ground.
The scene from Granada's Sierra Nevada was among many harrowing tales that have emerged after an hours-long blackout that grounded flights, paralysed trains and metros, and cut off mobile communications across the Iberian peninsula.
In the small Basque city of Eibar, 11 people were trapped in a public lift for more than three hours. 'It's unbelievable that this could happen,' Mempho Mujanovic told the newspaper El Diario Vasco. 'Nobody can understand how, in the 21st century, we ended up spending so much time in a lift.'
The lift came to a halt as it was making the 40-metre descent from a school to the street below. As the temperature began to rise inside, some of the six trapped four-year-olds began banging on the glass doors, anxious to be let out.
Metres below, people watched nervously from the street, shouting messages of support and urging them to stay calm as emergency workers scrambled to get them out.
About 90 minutes later, rescuers managed to open a hatch in the lift, allowing cooler air to circulate and water to be passed around. Three-and-a-half hours into the blackout, they made it out. 'Thank goodness the pregnant woman had some diapers in her purse, so we were able to take care of the little ones' needs,' said Mujanovic.
Across Spain and Portugal, the lengthy blackout unfolded mostly peacefully, with many flocking to bars and terraces – where some resorted to pooling cash or racking up IOUs as ATMs and card payment systems remained down.
Others resigned themselves to walking kilometres to make it home after metros and commuter trains came to a halt. Mobile phone coverage was scant, leaving many wondering if their loved ones were safe and sound.
In Madrid and Lisbon, snarled-up traffic added another layer of complication, as the blackout had knocked out traffic lights. At most intersections, a crawling procession of drivers was left to negotiate waves of pedestrians, occasionally helped by police and, in one case, by a man wielding a baguette.
On Tuesday, police said they were investigating four deaths connected with the blackout: a Madrid woman who died after a fire, possibly caused by a candle, broke out in her flat; and in northern Spain, an elderly couple and their son who are believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning linked to a malfunctioning generator.
When the power went out, an estimated 150,000 people in Madrid were inside the metro and its facilities. About 44 trains ground to a halt in tunnels deep underground, forcing passengers to use their phones to light the way as they crossed tracks, platforms and stairs to make it to safety, according to the newspaper El País.
The Madrid regional government said metro staff had spent the night combing kilometres of tunnels to ensure nobody had been left behind.
For many, their odysseys continued long after the power was restored. On Tuesday morning, about 26 hours after boarding a train in Barcelona, Patricia Díaz lamented that a six-hour trip to the south-eastern Spanish city of Albacete had become a journey still with no end in sight. 'They're returning us to Valencia,' she told El País.
She described herself as among the lucky ones, however, in that her train had come to a halt close enough to the station that she and other passengers had been able to get out and stock up on food and water at a nearby supermarket.
Around midnight, they were told they would have to spend the night on the train. 'I'm small and I've been able to curl up between two seats, but I've barely slept,' she said.
The train that Renato, 64, and Diana, 70, tourists from Argentina, were on had travelled just 6km en route from Madrid to Barcelona when the power went out, leaving them trapped inside for nine hours as the temperature inside their wagon rose, drinking water ran out and the restrooms became unusable.
Around midnight, the pair were back at Madrid's main station, unsure what to do next. 'We're shipwrecked in the 21st century,' they told the news site Eldiario.es.
Thousands of travellers across the peninsula faced similar dilemmas. With hotels full and spotty mobile coverage making it difficult to sort out other solutions, sports centres, train stations and airports were turned into makeshift refuges. 'We all slept on the floor like dogs,' one woman stranded at Barcelona's Sants station with a 10-year-old girl, told the BBC.
As the power was restored late on Monday to central Madrid, some local people turned up at the main train station to help. Lola, 43, brought blankets and was offering to take people to hotels to check for vacancies, while Carlos, 34, and Claudia, 30, told Eldiario.es they had come to offer their spare bedroom and living room sofa to anyone in need of a place to stay.
Javier Orquina, 50, wandered the train station with a cart full of groceries, handing out supplies. Living nearby, he said he had felt compelled to help after he saw the 'mess' going on. 'I put everything I had in the cart and came here,' he told the newspaper El Mundo.
Analysts said those hit hardest by the blackout included the hospitality and retail sectors, as many were left grappling with spoiled stocks and a day's lost earnings.
At Disfrutar in Barcelona – currently ranked the world's best restaurant – the power went out just as the diners, many of whom had reserved their spots months in advance, were due to arrive. 'The shopping was done, many had arrived from the other side of the world, and we had to serve them,' Oriol Castro, one of the restaurant's chefs, told La Vanguardia.
Staff were dispatched across the city to buy camping stoves and candles, said Castro, 'which we set up through the kitchen so we could work'. The team went through the intricate menu, which spans about two dozen plates, figuring out which dishes could realistically be served without power and those that would have to be left out.
They managed to pull it off. But when the meal came to an end, the lingering power outage meant they had another problem: how to charge diners for bills that had probably run into the hundreds of euros.
With ATMs still out of service and card payment systems down, the team opted for trust. 'We gave them the information so they could make a bank transfer in the next few days to settle the bill,' said Castro.