On Thursday morning, Barcelona experienced a major power outage: around 90,000 customersβincluding private homes, commercial properties, and municipal institutionsβwere left without electricity. According to Endesa, the cause was an accident at a high-voltage substation in the Sant Andreu district. The incident affected not only local residents but also businesses across different parts of the city, since the municipal power grid is closely interconnected between neighborhoods.
As EL PERIΓDICO reports, technical teams began addressing the consequences immediately after the outage was detected. Within just 15 minutes of the incident, the number of disconnected clients had been reduced to 60,000, though tens of thousands of residents and organizations still remained without power. Restoration work is ongoing, and there is still no precise timeline for when the problem will be fully resolved.
The outage occurred exactly one year after the previous major blackout, which at the time affected the whole country. This time, the consequences were limited to Barcelona, but the scale of the incident was again considerable. Recalling other recent transportation and infrastructure failures in the region, it’s worth noting that interruptions to city systems have happened before: for example, delays on Rodalies trains in Catalonia have also caused widespread inconvenience for residents.
Although the incident occurred at a single substation, its effects quickly spread to several districts of Barcelona. This is due to the specific structure of the city’s power grid, where a failure at one point can affect several neighborhoods at once. According to Endesa, specialists are continuing to restore power supply in stages and are analyzing the causes of the incident to prevent similar situations in the future.
