The Iberian blackout
Spain and Portugal lose all power in five seconds.
- When
- Known to
- ± 30 seconds
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
- Where
- Madrid, Spain · 40.4168° N, 3.7038° W
At 12:33 on 28 April 2025 the Iberian grid collapsed, cutting electricity to some 60 million people for up to a day. Trains stopped between stations, hospitals ran on generators and mobile networks failed. The inquiry pointed to voltage instability and a cascade of disconnections rather than any attack, and the event became the reference case in arguments about grid inertia on systems dominated by renewables.