Power stare: Spain rules out cyberattack behind blackout

- No signs were found (that the outage was caused by a cyberattack on the Red Electrica network operator – editor's note) and that's good news – declared Aagesen, who is the Minister for Ecological Transition. On April 29, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stated that his government does not rule out any causes of the outage, including a cyberattack.

On Wednesday, Aagesen reported that the widespread outage, which on April 28 caused power supply disruptions across Spain, but also in neighbouring Portugal, started with the loss of 2.2 gigawatts of power in the south of the country – at substations in Granada, Badajoz, and Seville. These failures were said to have triggered a series of disconnections from the network. The power supply was restored the next day.

According to Reuters, Aagesen noted that several investigations are ongoing regarding the outage, and for the first time, Spanish authorities provided information on where the blackout began. She also admitted that determining its cause will take some time and may not give a definitive answer.

At the end of April, the president of the Spanish employers' organization CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, estimated that the power outage affecting the Iberian Peninsula will cost the economy around 1.6 billion euros (2.5 billion Canadian dollars), which accounts for 0.1 percent of the gross domestic product.

Garamendi emphasized the scale of the problems caused by the outage. He indicated that refineries would need weeks to restore full capacity, and large blast furnaces might have suffered significant damage. - This is a huge impact on the economy - stated the head of the employers' organization during a conversation with journalists.