Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp suffered a widespread outage late at night. Users in Spain and over 70 countries faced issues loading content and sending messages. Meta has not explained the cause of the disruption.
Millions of users in Spain and around the world faced hours-long disruptions on Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp after a major technical failure struck Meta’s platforms late at night. The outage, which began shortly after 22:00, left users unable to load content or refresh their feeds, with the impact felt most acutely in major Spanish cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Valladolid, Málaga, Sevilla and Vigo. Reports of problems quickly spread to more than 70 countries, according to data from Downdetector.es, as users struggled to access core features of the apps.
For roughly two hours, Instagram and Facebook feeds failed to update, and many users encountered error messages such as “No se ha podido cargar la actividad” when trying to view new activity. Facebook Messenger also experienced global disruptions, while Whatsapp users in Spain reported difficulties sending and receiving messages, as well as delays in syncing conversations and media files. Although the volume of Whatsapp complaints was lower than for Instagram and Facebook, the messaging service was not immune to the instability.
By midnight, error reports began to decline, with Facebook services fully restored by 3:00 and Instagram following an hour later. Despite the widespread impact, Meta has not issued any statement explaining the cause of the outage or clarifying whether the issues across its platforms were connected. As is common during such incidents, many users turned to X to share real-time updates and humorous reactions to the disruption.
Downdetector.es data shows that the technical problems were not limited to Spain, with users in dozens of countries experiencing similar failures. In Spain, the highest concentration of reports came from major urban centers, but smaller towns were also affected. The incident highlights the reliance on Meta’s platforms for daily communication and information sharing. According to industry data, Spain remains one of the leading European countries in social media usage, with over 80% of the population active on at least one Meta-owned app. Outages of this scale are rare but can disrupt both personal and business communications, underlining the importance of digital infrastructure in everyday life.
