A huge power outage brought parts of Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday, grounding planes, halting public transport, causing panic buying and leaving the two countries scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work, some shops shut their doors and the two countries’ governments convened emergency cabinet meetings as officials tried to find out what caused the mass blackout from around 1033 GMT. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe.

We do not yet have conclusive information on the reasons for this (power) cut, so I ask the people, as we have done in past crises, to inform themselves through official channels,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a national address.
“For the time being, there’s no evidence of any civil protection problems. I repeat, there are no problems of insecurity.”
He said Spain’s national security council would meet again on Monday evening to take stock of the situation.