A state of emergency has been declared in Spain: all nuclear power plants are standing

The blackout continues in Spain. The Government has declared a state of emergency. The operator reports that the power system is gaining power, but so far too weak.

Spain's Interior ministry has declared a state of emergency after a nationwide power outage occurred in most of the Iberian Peninsula, Reuters reports. The ministry added that the emergency status will be applied in the regions that request it. Before that, Madrid, Andalusia and Extremadura asked the central government to take over public order.

"The reasons are still being studied. It is better not to speculate," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a nationwide address. According to him, as reported by El Pais, he foresees "critical hours." Earlier, the power system operator said that the outages would last 6-10 hours.

"Sanchez asked to avoid travel, to use mobile phones only for short calls, not to get emergency services and to follow only official information," the newspaper writes.

A large-scale blackout that occurred in the afternoon led to a halt in rail traffic in Spain. It also affected the work of the metro and public transport throughout the country.

"This has caused long queues in supermarkets and a lot of people stuck in elevators," writes El Pais.

Meanwhile, hospitals and prisons are running on generators, the Spanish edition continues. Medical institutions serve only critical cases.

"More than one-fifth of the peninsula's demand has been restored with the help of 5,508 MW from autonomous production and imports from France. Power supply is gradually being restored in all regions of the country. 45% of the transmission network substations are already powered," the operator Red Electrica reports.

According to the EU energy system platform ENTSO-E, the generation capacity in Spain increased from 8 GW immediately after the blackout began to 13 GW. At the same time, all nuclear power plants are still not working. They were safely put into shutdown mode.

"This failure threw Spain back into the nineteenth century. Out-of-order traffic lights, traffic jams, pedestrians wandering due to lack of public transport, relatives desperate to communicate with each other, passengers without a train or plane, canceled medical consultations, rescue work in the subway and elevators, defrosted refrigerators in restaurants and houses, battery-powered transistors turned on to receive news on the radio and queues at the door small shops due to the closure of supermarkets - that's part of the unexpected landscape this Monday," writes El Pais.