Spanish PM urges private energy companies to find the cause of massive power outages | Spain

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has asked private energy drivers to help its government to determine the cause of the unprecedented power failure on Monday on the Iberian peninsula, and that changes and improvements must be made to ensure “the offer and future competitiveness” of the country’s electrical system.

Spain and Portugal suffered a massive loss of electricity, which started on Monday shortly after 12.30 p.m. and lasted at night. It is believed that at least five people in Spain have died due to the blackout, in which the passengers were caught in paralyzed trains and in the static elevators of apartment blocks and offices.

Although energy drivers have rejected the possibility of a cyber attack in both countries, the socialist government of Sánchez refuses to exclude “every hypothesis”, and the highest criminal court in Spain has opened an investigation to determine whether “an act of computer sabotage” against critical Spanish infrastructure.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro has requested an independent investigation and said that his government would ask the EU agency to “carry out an independent examination of the electrical systems of the affected countries in order to completely determine the causes of this situation”.

On Tuesday evening, Sánchez called private energy drivers – including the President of the National Grid operator, Red Eléctrica, and representative of Iberdrola, Endesa, Edp, Acciona Energia and Naturgy – an urgent meeting to discuss the blackout.

Sánchez spoke to the nation hours earlier and announced the creation of a commission to examine the incident and examine the role of private energy companies. He also said that Red Eléctrica’s conclusion found that the power failure was not only due to media reports to a cyber attack.

In a post on X after the meeting, Sánchez emphasized the importance of Swift and joint measures with private energy suppliers.

“I thanked you for your work to quickly restore the offer, and I also asked you to work with the government and independent organizations to determine the causes of the incident,” he said. “We have to make the necessary improvements to ensure the offer and future competitiveness of our system.”

The examinations focus on what happened on Monday at 12.33 p.m. when 15 gigawatts of the energy produced – 60% of the energy used – suddenly disappeared.

In a radio interview on Wednesday morning, Beatriz Corrredor, the President of Red Eléctrica, said that the company knew what caused the power failure but was still equipped with a large amount of data.

“We know the cause and we have pursued it more or less, but the thing is that there are millions of information because signals are sent in every millisecond,” she told Cadena Ser Radio. Corrredor said she would not withdraw from the incident and added: “To do this, he would see that the right actions were not taken, and that was not the case.”

Sánche’s political opponents claim that he had pushed plans to prioritize renewable energies from nuclear energy without thinking of the consequences and trying to blame private energy companies for the power failure.

The conservative People’s Party (PP) accused the Prime Minister of leading an “information blackout” about the incident and asked him to appear before the congress in order to fully report what he knows about the incident.

“The government has not taken on responsibility, has not made itself self-critical and it didn’t even apologize to people,” said PP sources on Wednesday morning.

The party also pointed out that Corrredor served as a minister in the last socialist government.

The PP’s criticism comes six months after the party has been criticized for its slow and inadequate response to the devastating floods, the 227 people in Valencia, one of the regions that she ruled. Although the regional government received several meteorological warnings of the heavy rains that triggered the floods, it only sent an emergency warning to people’s cell phones after 8 p.m. on the day of the flood. The PP President of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, also spent three hours to eat with a journalist at noon when the floods in her houses and cars drown.

The right-wing extremist VOX party also trained its fire on Sánchez and accused him of a costly ideological dislike of nuclear power that Spain had left in the dark.

Sánchez’s criticism released. “Those who associate this incident with the lack of nuclear power are open or demonstrate their ignorance,” said Sánchez on Tuesday and added that the production of nuclear energy is “not more resistant” than other electricity sources.

His words calmed Vox ‘guide Santiago Abascal, who used a post to X to reverse the prime minister. “Stop lying so shamelessly,” said Abascal. “The power failure lies with you and your catastrophic energy policy. You said that this could not happen … Now that it happened, you have to face the judicial consequences.”

Corrredor also said it was wrong to combine the power failure with the increasing dependence on renewable energies in Spain. “The mix for renewable energies is safe and can be part of all security systems of the electrical operating system,” she told Cadena Ser. “Linking what happened with renewable energies on Monday is not correct. Renewable energies work stable.”