Spanish region declares power outage 'caused by cyberattack'

hacker (Image: Getty)

The head of a region in Spain says a massive power outage appears to have been caused by a cyberattack. The whole of Spain, as well as parts of Portugal and reportedly France, have been afffected by Monday's outage.

President of the Andalusian regional government, Juan Manuel Moreno, confirmed that, according to the information provided by the regional cybersecurity centre, "everything points to a blackout of this magnitude only being due to a cyberattack". However, he confirmed he had not received any communication from the Spanish government regarding the widespread power outage, saying that he reached this conclusion "solely based on our own data". Mr Moreno also expressed concern about the duration of the blackout, saying: "We'll see how long this will last because the generators only have a 24-hour capacity."

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Traffic lights have reportedly stopped working in Madrid, Spain's capital (Image: Getty)

He indicated that hospitals are operating normally because they have power generators.

But Portugal's National Cybersecurity Centre says there is "no evidence has been identified to date that points to a cyberattack", according to reports.

Spanish Congress has cancelled all activity scheduled for Monday.

Traffic in Madrid amid reports of traffic lights being down, as well as trains and metros (Image: Getty)

Major cities including Madrid, Seville and Lisbon have been hit by the power outage, leaving residents without electricty and mobile signal.

Parts of the Spanish capital's underground have been evacuated and traffic lights are not working, according to local media.

Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica says it is working with energy companies to restore power. An official said it could take between six and 10 hours for the issues to be fully resolved.

The incident has sparked chaos across Europe, with flights and trains cancelled.

Portuguese airline TAP Air has warned passengers not to head to airports until further notice.

Backup generators have been activated across Spain's airports, according to Aena, the public body that owns and operates the majority of airports in Spain.

The issues have also impacted the Madrid Open tennis tournament, where play has been suspended.

The EU Commission has confirmed it is in contact with national authorities in Spain and Portugal, as well as the bloc's power grid body, ENTSO-e.

Talks are being held between officials to understand the underlying cause of the outage and its impact. 

British Overseas Territory Gibraltar appears to be the only region on the Iberian Peninsula with electricity.

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