Madrid, May 28, 2025: The Spanish government has firmly rejected claims that an experimental test on the national power grid precipitated the widespread blackout that paralyzed Spain and Portugal on April 28. The outage disrupted telecommunications, halted transportation, and plunged major cities into darkness across the Iberian Peninsula.
Last Friday, The Telegraph, citing unnamed Brussels sources, alleged that Spanish authorities were conducting an experiment to assess the limits of renewable energy integration ahead of Spain's planned nuclear reactor phase-out starting in 2027. The report also suggested that the government accelerated this transition without adequately upgrading the grid to a modern, smart infrastructure capable of handling such demands.
Responding to these allegations in parliament, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen declared the report to be "completely false," condemning any assignment of blame before the official investigation concludes. She emphasized that no experimental activity was undertaken on the grid prior to the blackout.
Beatriz Corredor, head of Spain's electricity transmission operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE), corroborated this stance in an interview with La Vanguardia. She dismissed theories attributing the outage to excessive renewable energy input, cyberattacks, overloads, or short circuits. Instead, she indicated that conventional power producers — including gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric plants — likely failed to regulate voltage properly on the day of the incident, although she did not confirm if this directly caused the blackout.
Investigations into the precise causes of the outage are ongoing, with officials urging caution against premature conclusions amid heightened public concern over energy security and the country's transition toward renewable sources.
