How to reveal the power outages in Spain and Portugal

The first sign of the troubles noted by Peter Hughes was when his train began to Madrid.

Then the TV and lights screen was launched. Emergency lamps have been operated, but they did not last, and the locomotive land stopped.

Four hours later, Mr. Hughes was still stuck on the train 200 km (124 miles) outside the capital of Spain. He had food and water, but the toilets were not working.

“Darkness will be soon and we may stumble here for hours,” he told the BBC.

The massive pieces that were cut off by the ways of chaos throughout Spain and Portugal, and affected Andorra and parts of France, from around midday local time (10:00 GMT).

Traffic lights are closed. The metro closed. Companies closed and people joined the waiting lists to get money as cards did not succeed.

Jonathan Emery was on a different train in the middle of the road between Seville and Madrid when the cuts were struck.

For an hour, he sat on the train, closed the doors, so that people can open them to allow ventilation. Half an hour later, he left the passengers, just to find themselves cut off.

It was when people from local villages began to come and drop supplies – water, bread and fruits.

“Nobody receives anything, and the word should be wandered in the local city because people continue to come,” he said.

In Madrid, Hana was in the middle of the road by wiping grocery shopping in Aldi when the energy came out.

Ms. Lony said in a voice message sent to BBC Radio 5 Live, that people were leaving their offices and walking home because they could not know when the buses were coming.

“It is a little worrying that it is the entire country, I haven’t tested this before,” she said.

Mark England was lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, where he was staying on a vacation in Beedrom, when “everything started and the fire alarm began to go out and the doors of fire began to close.”

Teacher Emily Thorwood said that at an international school in Lisbon, electricity and abroad had been shown for a while, and then surrendered.

She continued to teach in the dark, and children who wear good lives, but many parents were getting their children out of school.

Will David, the British who lives in Lisbon, had hair cutting and beard on the bottom of the barber when the authority fell. The barber found him a place next to the window on the top floor to finish the cut with scissors.

He said: “The Walk Home poetry is very strange, as the lack of traffic lights that means that they are free for all for vehicles and pedestrians on roads-in addition to many people who wander around their workplaces without anything.”

Initially, mobile phone networks also decreased for some, leaving many stampede for information.

Cortis Golden, in La Val Dalxo, said about 30 miles from Valencia, he is “frightening” because he struggled to get updates about what was happening.

Eloise Edgington, who could not do any work as a writer in Barcelona, ​​said she was only receiving cross messages, and she could not download web pages on her phone and was trying to keep her battery.

An hour and a half after the energy came out, a Fortona resident, in southeastern Spain, said that her husband was wandering, in an attempt to find a gas station that could provide fuel to operate a generator and keep the refrigerator.

“We are concerned about food, water, criticism and gasoline if this continues for a few days,” said Leslie, a British who lived in Spain for 11 years.

She said the locals “have more anxiety than the Madrid Open Tennis Championship, adding that” very few news about what happened. ”

“The majority of stores are in the dark and closed or have people on the entrances they say you cannot enter,” said Mr. England walking on the street in Beardorm.

After the phone reference was returned to Mr. Gladden after about two hours, he and others ventured in cafes, but they found “nothing working – we came to get some food and drink but they could not cook without electricity.”

In two hours, Red Electrica, the Spanish power network operator, said he began to restore energy in the north and south of the country.

But after two and a half hours of discounts, the mayor of Madrid, Jose Luis Martinez-Blaida, urges all the population to “preserve their movements to the absolute minimum, and if possible, at all, in their place”, in a video recorded from the integrated emergency security center in the city.

At 15:00 local time, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gathered a “unusual” meeting of the Spanish National Security Council.

Red Electrica Eduardo Prieto said at a press conference shortly after that it might take “between six and ten hours” to restore energy.

Immediately before 16:00, the electricity fell in Malaga. By 17:00, the network operator said that the energy is restored “in several areas of the North, South and West Peninsula of the (Iber) peninsula.”

Portugal’s energy company gave a more clear prediction, saying that it might “take up to a week” before the network returns to normal.

The effects that occur on the effects continue: the relative generators have been operated in airports, allowing most flights to leave on time, but some have not been able to work.

Tom McGilli, on a vacation in Lisbon, was scheduled to return to London on Monday evening, but early in the evening he did not know what would happen.

He said at a time when people were drinking drinks and food – but the sellers told him that they would not only be able to continue to work until the batteries were running out of their payment stations.

“If you need to reserve a hotel if the plane is canceled, I don’t know how to do this if the payments decrease,” he added.

“The parents of my partners are trying to get gasoline so that they can take us to return us to Alentejo, but many gasoline stations are closed or not paid. We may be stuck without a plan for the place to stay tonight.”

Additional report and research conducted by André Masia, Chris Pramwell, James Kelly, Bernadet Makagu, Josh Barry, Naja Monchiti