Power begins to return after huge outage hits Spain and Portugal

Tennis - Madrid Open - Park Manzanares, Madrid, Spain - April 28, 2025 A woman uses her cell phone's flashlight in the dark after the matches get suspended due to a power outage REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura

MADRID/LISBON (Reuters) -Power started returning to parts of the Iberian peninsula late on Monday after a huge outage brought most of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, grounding planes, halting public transport, and forcing hospitals to suspend routine operations.

Spain's Interior Ministry declared a national emergency, deploying 30,000 police across the country to keep order as governments from the two countries convened emergency cabinet meetings. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe.