Overview

• A massive blackout on April 28 disrupted Spain, Portugal, and parts of France, leaving tens of millions without power and causing widespread infrastructure failures.
• A separate outage on May 8 affected 30,000 people in La Palma, Canary Islands, for nearly two hours, reportedly due to a fault at the Los Guinchos power plant.
• Experts attribute the Iberian Peninsula blackout to grid instability, with renewable-heavy systems lacking sufficient physical inertia to stabilize frequency.
• The incidents have reignited debates over Spain's planned nuclear phase-out, with nuclear advocates arguing for its role as a stable baseload source.
• Calls for urgent grid modernization include increasing cross-border interconnections, expanding energy storage, and deploying advanced technologies to handle renewable energy demands.