\n<\/p>\n
Traffic lights went dark at busy intersections. Trains stopped in the middle of a workday. And long lines formed at A.T.M.s and grocery stores, where credit card readers stopped working.<\/p>\n
Widespread power outages upended life for millions across Spain and Portugal (and briefly, parts of France) on Monday, leading to questions about what caused the disruptions and when the lights would return.<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s national power company said early Tuesday<\/a> that nearly all power demand in Peninsular Spain was being met as of 6 a.m. Power had begun to return to Portugal on Monday, according to that country\u2019s electricity and gas supplier. The electrical grid operator in France, where the outage briefly affected households in the Basque region, said all power had been restored.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we know.<\/p>\n Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, said that officials were still investigating the causes of the outage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Portugal\u2019s national energy supplier, E-Redes, cited an unspecified \u201cproblem in the European electricity grid.\u201d<\/p>\n Ant\u00f3nio Leit\u00e3o Amaro, a senior official in the Portuguese government, said there was no evidence of a cyberattack. REN, a Portuguese electricity and gas supplier, denied reports that an unspecified \u201catmospheric phenomenon\u201d was to blame.<\/p>\n There were widespread problems connecting to the internet and to phone networks across Spain and Portugal, and Mr. S\u00e1nchez urged people to make only brief calls on their cellphones.<\/p>\n Hospitals in Spain were forced to run on generators. Portuguese banks and schools closed. Spain\u2019s national rail company said that trains had stopped operating at all stations. Subways in several cities, including Valencia<\/a> and Madrid<\/a>, were halted. The Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended. And people crammed into stores to buy food and other essentials as clerks used pen and paper to record cash-only transactions.<\/p>\n Diana Alfia, an employee at a hostel in Lisbon, said that some people had gone to the beach since there was not much else to do, and some tourists walked miles from the airport into the city because Uber and public transportation were not available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI feel like everybody is still calm, because a lot of people are hoping for it to become better within the next hours,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t know in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Spain\u2019s meteorological agency, AEMET, temperatures across the country were between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit around the time of the power outages. By the end of the day, highs had climbed to between 82 and 87 degrees.<\/p>\n This was above average: In April, temperatures in Spain average around 64 degrees in central and northern regions and about 70 degrees in the south.<\/p>\n When asked whether the outages were connected to the heat, Bruno Silva, a spokesman for REN, was skeptical. \u201cNo, I hope not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n More than 50 million people in Italy<\/a> were left in the dark for almost a full day in 2003 after a line between Switzerland and Italy was overloaded. It was considered the worst day of blackouts in the country since World War II. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2006, 10 million people in Germany were briefly without power<\/a> after the northwestern part of the country\u2019s power grid became overloaded.<\/p>\nThe cause remains under investigation.<\/h2>\n
Hospitals, banks and travel were disrupted in Spain and Portugal.<\/h2>\n
Power went out amid high temperatures.<\/h2>\n
Other European outages have halted daily life.<\/h2>\n