Sabotage Or Technical Glitch? Spain Plunges Into Chaos Again As Mobile Networks Crash This Time

Four weeks after a massive power blackout, which left millions without electricity for around 23 hours in April, mobile network across Spain went down on May 20 – leading to a countrywide communication crisis. Users lost both internet access and phone signals.

Even emergency lines (112) stopped functioning in several areas. The situation reached to the extent that authorities had to issue temporary numbers for emergency services to help people in need.

Major cities such as Valencia, Seville, Barcelona and Madrid faced the heat of this outage. All big communication services providers like Telefonica and Vodafone were affected by the outage.

Compared to cell phones, the outage hit harder landline communication services. It also affected voice services.

According to Downdetector, the outage began around 2 a.m., with at least 72% of users reporting it. Eighteen percent users had no signal. Ten percent of them faced a complete blackout.

The crash took place, according to Telefonica, as a result of a network upgrade. “We did some upgrade work, and it affected fixed voice and internet services for some companies. We are working to fix it. Some services, like 112, are already back,” media reports have quoted a spokesperson as saying.

Meanwhile, the authorities claim to have restored emergency numbers in areas such as Andalusia, La Rioja, Aragon and Valencia.

The Spanish government said it is monitoring the situation, and the Ministry for Digital Transformation has asked Telefonica for updates on the outage and a timeline for a full recovery.

As a result of the crash, metro systems in Portugal and Spain faced a halt, darkness blanketed streets and airlines faced disruptions. Hundreds of flights were canceled.

Sensing the possibility of a cyber attack, Spain has launched multiple probes, headed by a high court judge, into the blackout. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez emphasised that renewable energy should not be blamed for the outage. And REE, the head of Spain’s power grid, too agreed with the prime minister.

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