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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
María Ramírez

In the Madrid power cuts, I saw patience and common sense – but we were woefully unprepared

A crowd of people gathered around a radio.
People gather around a portable radio in Madrid to listen to an address by Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

At the entrance to a healthcare centre on Trafalgar Street, in my densely populated, central Madrid neighbourhood, somebody had stuck a sign: “We ask for patience and common sense.” The door was half open as doctors and nurses calmly tended to emergencies inside.

Patience and common sense is a very good way to describe what I witnessed in Madrid throughout the big blackout. We had no light, no power, no phone signal, not even water in some apartment buildings.

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