Spain Blackout: Phone, internet services affected weeks after nationwide electricity outage

Spain Blackout: Mobile phone and internet service providers, including those of Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil, and O2, were suffering from a mass-scale blackout on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, reported the UK-based news portal LBC.

According to the news report, the sudden outage prevented the customers of these service providers from making calls or receiving text messages using their mobile data. 

Downdetector data shows that the outage began on Tuesday morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. The website is an industry-preferred platform that tracks cyber outages globally.

The outage has spread across the nation as people report issues with not receiving the signal, a total blackout, and internet issues, according to the news portal's report.

People are calling their individual service providers in search of an answer and also sharing posts about it on social media platforms.

“Hi, @movistar_es, it’s already 9:10 a.m. Are you going to explain what’s going on? The network has gone down… again. You’ll see how they can issue the bill without any problems,” a user said, cited the news portal in its report. 

Nationwide Electricity Outage

Last month, a massive power outage in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France left millions without electricity. This power blackout affected many essential services and also affected the people who were left without a payment system other than cash.

On April 28, the unprecedented power outage hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France, leaving millions without access to electricity, affecting subway networks, phone lines, traffic lights, and ATMs. Madrid and Lisbon were among the major cities affected by this blackout.

Power distributor E-Redes confirmed that the outage was linked to the European electricity system, which forced them to cut power in specific areas to stabilise the grid, according to inputs from news agencies like AFP and AP.

Emergency Helpline Crisis

The blackout in Spain has also affected the emergency service phone lines, as the Euro-wide emergency number “112” became unreachable in certain parts of Spain, according to the news portal's report.

The Valencia government has set up an alternative emergency service number for its people. The emergency service number also alerted people on social media that “the 112 telephone line is inoperative,” said the news report.

Corporations were completely frozen out of their systems, unable to connect to their computers or softwares. According to the news agency's report, the major glitch causing the outage came from Telefónica’s system, the largest mobile operator in Spain.

The report also highlighted that the engineers are working to fix the problem, which was caused by a failed network update.