MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To Spain now, which, along with Portugal and parts of Southern France, came to a standstill today. An electricity outage halted traffic lights, trains, flights, mobile phone networks, ATMs - you name it. Some 60 million people have been affected. Now, power is slowly coming back in many areas, but the cause of the disruption remains unclear. NPR's Miguel Macias is in Seville in Spain, one of the cities hardest hit. Hey, Miguel.
MIGUEL MACIAS, BYLINE: Hello, Mary Louise.
KELLY: I gather you have power now, but you didn't for a number of hours today. Tell me what happened.
MACIAS: Yes, indeed. So let me start by saying that electricity is mostly reliable in Spain, and I say this mostly because there are neighborhoods in major cities where supply is very unreliable. These tend to be low-income neighborhoods in Seville, Madrid - they're well-known. But that's not what happened today. Today was completely unprecedented. I've certainly never experienced anything like this before. It all started just after midday local time. The moment was caught on a live broadcast of the Madrid Tennis Open. Tennis player Coco Gauff was speaking live to Sky News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COCO GAUFF: (Laughter) So maybe I just need to, like, not get a lot of sleep.
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR: Well, I think we've just lost a bit of sound there. We're unable to hear.
MACIAS: Parliament in Madrid was affected, traffic lights stopped working, causing traffic chaos, trains ground to a halt. People had to get off and walk.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: (Speaking Spanish).
MACIAS: And air traffic was severely affected. This chaos was mirrored in parts of Portugal as well, including the capital, Lisbon, and parts of the south of France. Backup systems kept power going at the sites such as hospital, nuclear plants and prisons, though.
KELLY: Wow. Sounds like just chaos across the board. Tell me more about your day. What happened in your city there, in Seville?
MACIAS: It's interesting because while I saw people in my neighborhood mostly reacting calmly, I've heard from friends and family about some tensions, especially on the road. When the power went out around lunchtime, I went out right away and saw people going out on the streets to check with their neighborhoods and make sure this was not just their home. Then friends on WhatsApp right away started saying that this was a national thing.
Supermarkets closed their doors. Traffic lights were not working. The national traffic authorities asked citizens to not travel unless it was strictly necessary. On the streets, locals could be seen gathering supplies from convenience stores - anything from candles, water, ice, food, battery radios. Sirens were blasting in the background. I was stopped several times because I was looking at my phone - people asking me if I had service. I had some service, and then it completely went out for a few hours.
KELLY: Yeah. And so to the big question of why. We said we don't know the cause. Are the governments there in Spain and Portugal giving any indication of what they think happened?
MACIAS: So Portugal's prime minister said that, quote, "there is no indication of a cyberattack." All the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that they were not ruling out any theory. He spoke to the nation past 6:00 p.m. local time. And just a note that I recorded this on my battery-powered little recorder in front of a battery video as well (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER PEDRO SANCHEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
MACIAS: So he says they have no final information about the cause of this power outage. He also made a special point to ask citizens to get their information from, quote, "official channels."
At this hour, power has been mostly restored in the south of Spain, where I am, thanks to supply coming from Morocco. It does seem like the worst of this episode is behind us.
KELLY: Thank goodness for battery-powered little recorders. NPR's Miguel Macias there in Seville. Thank you, Miguel.
MACIAS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF LILY MOORE SONG, "BEAUTIFUL LIE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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