Losing Power & Finding Community in a Spanish Blackout

Disconnected but not alone

Photo by on

Yesterday wasn’t my first blackout.

I rode out Hurricane Sandy in Brooklyn. I grew up with rolling blackouts on hot summer days in Southern California.

I once spent the sweatiest night of my life in a Cambodian village when a drunken truck driver plowed into the only powerline providing the region with electricity.

I’m familiar with the feeling of being (literally) powerless as the lights go out, the dairy spoils in the fridge, and you check your phone, hoping to figure out what’s going on before the battery dies.

But I’ve never experienced anything quite like what we just went through during the .

A country-wide blackout that left thousands of people stranded was a catastrophe, to be sure.

But it’s not what I’ll remember years from now.

Because the most remarkable thing about the blackout is what didn’t happen.

Spain acted like Spain

Nobody panicked.

As far as I know, nobody looted.