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The blackout led to a total collapse of phone and internet services. Some 35,000 people were trapped on trains when the services collapsed.
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At the bus stop outside Madrid’s City Hall, the line of people waiting to get home snaked across the neighboring plaza and along the street.
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“It’s one of many,” said a policeman watching. The queue ran past the Naval Museum toward the park outside the old Stock Exchange building, where three students from the Instituto Empresa business school were lying on the grass soaking up the last of the sun and joking.
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“For the apocalypse,” laughed 18-year-old Gabriela Vara. “I love it,” said Ernesto Cabrera, 20, from Cuba. “Never in your life are you going to get another day like this. We just met in the street.”
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Between them, they’ve got 65 euros in cash to pay for dinner, though everywhere is closed anyway. “This is dinner,” says Cabrera, holding up a tube of Pringles chips.
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They’ve all got exams later this week. But the course materials are all online so they literally have no books they could be studying from.
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Beyond the surprise afternoon off, there are serious questions about how the government of Spain handled this particular crisis. Sanchez is no stranger to criticism — he’s scraped by his share of elections and contemplated resigning a year ago. He took his time to face the public while his counterpart in Portugal spoke up sooner.
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“In Norway, where I come from, the government would 100% have said something,” said 20-year-old Signe Villum. “We don’t know anything.”
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Why Restarting a Power Grid After Massive Collapse Is So Hard
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The problem with the lack of immediate answers is that the risk of speculation running amok is much bigger now than it was just a couple of decades ago, when flip phones and not smartphones were the norm. Left to opine on the source of the outage, Villum was quick to proffer a theory: “Cyberattack.”
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That is one scenario Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro tried to dispel, saying there was “no indication” of it. The conspiracy-minded students aren’t convinced. 10
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It’s been a day of rumors, with people in the street coming up with their own interpretation of what “anomalous oscillations” and “induced atmosphere vibration” mean, all terms they picked up on the radio.
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With most of the usual information networks down and sirens blaring down Madrid’s main boulevard, the Paseo de la Castellana, swarms of office workers were just trying to get home.
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More than a few had to check into whatever hotel they could find.
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In the Rosewood Villamagna Hotel on the Castellana, emergency generators kept the bar and restaurant buzzing as staff tried to keep their increasingly frazzled guests happy. One northern European dressed all in black with long ginger hair angrily asked for food, or even just an ATM. But as he soon discovered, no one uses or accepts cash anymore.
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