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Policy Panorama is a place to discuss the laws, systems, and norms that impact our lives and the planet. We welcome thoughtful discussion on policy and policy-adjacent topics at all levels, from the international to the local.

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Spain’s Short Blanket: A Blackout, a Blame Game, and a Broken System

7 min readMay 13, 2025

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Spain’s Short Blanket: A Blackout, a Blame Game, and a Broken System (created by author)

Five seconds.

That’s to turn Europe’s sunniest energy success story into a dystopian dress rehearsal.

On the unremarkable of April 28, over across Spain, Portugal, and went dark — instantly. Airports grounded. . Traffic lights died mid-blink. And cell towers went silent. Within minutes, humming cities turned chaotic and blind. And, more than ever, powerless. Spain declared a . Thirty thousand police were deployed. But you could already see it: the skin of digital order peeled back in real time to reveal a system that only works when everything else does.

By nightfall, just was back, but a day after the largest blackout in living memory, 99% of the had been and thanks to swift action by grid operators.

We still don’t have the full story yet. What we do know is that three catastrophic consecutive failures beginning in — a region stacked with solar farms…

Policy Panorama
Policy Panorama

Published in Policy Panorama

Policy Panorama is a place to discuss the laws, systems, and norms that impact our lives and the planet. We welcome thoughtful discussion on policy and policy-adjacent topics at all levels, from the international to the local.

Ricky Lanusse
Ricky Lanusse

Written by Ricky Lanusse

Patagonian skipping stones professional. Antarctic sapiens 🇦🇶 on

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