Millions across Spain and Portugal were left in the dark on Monday as an unprecedented power outage brought much of the Iberian peninsula to a standstill.
It took almost 23 hours for Spain’s electrical grid to declare that systems were back up and running as normal, with the outage affecting traffic lights, street lamps, payment terminals, and screens. Domestic and international transport was badly hit with metro systems grinding to a halt and communication networks faltering, leaving many wondering what had gone wrong. Hundreds of flights were canceled at airports across Spain and Portugal.