“Everything took it crazy”: how it took place until the massive current from Spain and Portugal

The first sign of problems that Peter Hughes observed was when his train to Madrid began to slow down.

Then the TV monitor and the lights went out. The emergency lights lit up, but it didn't last long, and the locomotive stopped suddenly.

Four hours later, Mr. Hughes was still stuck in the train, 200 kilometers (124 miles) outside the capital of Spain. He had food and water, but the toilets didn't work.

“It will be dark soon and we could stay locked here for hours,” he told the BBC.

The massive current that blocked Mr. Hughes triggered chaos in Spain and Portugal and also affected Andorra and some parts of France, starting with local time, around noon (10:00 GMT).

The traffic lights stopped. The subway has been closed. Business closed, and people were queuing to withdraw money, because the card payments did not work.

Jonathan Emery was in another train half the distance between Sevilla and Madrid when he started until current.

For an hour, he stayed on the train, with closed doors, until people managed to open them to allow ventilation. Half an hour later, the train started a few seconds, after which it was stuck.

Then people from local villages began to come and bring supplies – water, bread, fruits.

Madrid commuters remained confused in the dark when the current wedge hit the city's subway network. A resident, Sarah Jovovich, descended from the train when the lights were extinguished.

People were “hysterical” and “panicked,” she told the BBC. “It was quite chaotic, indeed.”

Mobile phones were no longer working and no one had any information. Once out of the subway station, he found the roads blocked by traffic.

“No one understood anything. The stores were closed, and the buses were full,” she said.

Hannah Lowney was halfway shopping from Aldi when the current was interrupted in the capital of Spain.

People were leaving offices and walking home because they didn't know if and when the buses arrive, Mrs. Lowney said in a vocal message sent to BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It's a bit confusing that it's all about the whole country, I haven't experienced something like this before,” she said.

Mark England had lunch in the hotel restaurant where he is on vacation in Benidorm when “it all started, the fire alarm started ringing and the doors closed.”

In an international school in Lisbon, electricity stopped suddenly, said Professor Emily Thorowgood.

She continued to teach in the dark, the children being well disposed, but many parents came to take the children at home, she said.

Will David, a British living in Lisbon, trimmed and arranged his beard in the basement of a hairdresser when the current was interrupted. The hairdresser found a place next to the window upstairs to finish the scissors.

“The road to the house was very strange, so because no traffic light was operating, which meant a total crowd of vehicles and pedestrians on the roads, but also because of the large number of people coming out of work because there was nothing to do,” he said.

Curtis Gladden, who is in La La Vall D'Uxo, about 48 kilometers from Valencia, said he is “scary”, because he is struggling to find out what is happening.

Eloise Edgington, who could not work as Copywriter in Barcelona, ​​said she was receiving very rarely, could not charge web pages on the phone and tried to save her battery.

An hour and a half after the current was interrupted, a resident of Fortuna, in southeastern Spain, said that her husband was driving the car, trying to find a gas station to supply them fuel to feed a generator and keep them the energy fed.

“We are worried about the lack of food, water, money and gasoline, if the situation will take a few days,” said Lesley, a British living in Spain for 11 years.

Locals also confess that, going to the streets of Benidorm, “most stores are in the dark and are closed or have people at the entrance who say you cannot enter. There are no ATMs, there are no traffic lights, so everything is strange.”

The mayor of Madrid urged the inhabitants to “limit their movements to a minimum”

After Mr. Gladden's telephone signal returned (in about two hours), he and others ventured to cafes, but they found that “nothing works-we came to take some food and a drink, but they cannot cook without electricity.”

Two and a half hours after the current cuts, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, urged the inhabitants to “limit his movements to a minimum and, if possible, to stay where he is”, in a video recorded from the Emergency Situations Center of the city.

At 3:00 pm, the local time, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez convened an “extraordinary” meeting of the National Security Council of Spain.

The executive director of Red Electrica, Eduardo Priesto, said, in a press conference shortly thereafter, that the restoration of the electric current could take “between six and ten hours”.

Just before 4:00 pm, the electric current was resumed in Malaga. By 5:00 pm, the network operator said the electric current was resumed “in several areas of the north, south and west of the peninsula [Iberice]”.

The Portuguese Energy Company Ren said it could “take up to a week” until the network returns to normal.

“No plan about where to stay”

Tom McGilloway, on vacation in Lisbon, was going to return to London on Monday night, but until the beginning of the evening he didn't know what would happen.

He said that, for now, people receive drinks and food-but the sellers told him that they will continue to work only until the batteries of their payment terminals are downloaded.

“If I have to book a hotel if the plane is canceled, I don't know how I can do this if I don't pay,” he added.

“My partner's parents are trying to get gas to come, take us and take us back to Alentejo, but many gas stations are closed or do not accept payments. We may be stuck here without any plan to stay tonight.”

Spanish violinist Isaac Bifet went to a rehearsal in the morning at the Symphony Orchestra in Madrid. But the building was completely dark, and most of the other instrumentalists of the orchestra had not come.

Cash without cash suffered the most, he told the BBC, because the online payment systems did not work.

The day without electric current was “strange” and “medieval”, said Mr. Bifet. But “the atmosphere was actually quite pleasant.”

And as the electricity was still interrupted in his apartment, he spent the evening drinking beers with friends in the candle light.