Spain Power Outage: Ensuring National Grids Remain Resilient
Power has largely been restored in Spain and Portugal, after a mass blackout hit both countries causing widespread disruption.
The significant power outages saw a state of emergency put in place in Spain amid confusion as cities like Valencia and Barcelona were left completely without power. Exactly what happened has yet to be confirmed officially, but reports suggest the European electrical grid is to blame and a damaged high-voltage power line in southwestern France.
Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said there is “no indication” of a cyberattack, according to the BBC, with the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez warning against speculation.
What impact do these events have on the data centre industry?
The impact on a lot of these facilities is currently unknown, but data centres typically rely on standby backup generators in the event of a widespread outage. These are often powered by diesel and can run for 24-72 hours depending on the individual generator.
Equinix this morning confirmed that its data centres in both countries are fully operational.
“Upon disruption of utility provided power, backup generation systems engaged to carry the data centre loads without interruption," the company said.
“As utility power is coming back online, we are now operating on utility power for all of our locations in Spain and Portugal. No customer impacts have been reported. [Equinix] continues to closely monitor the improving situation in the event the situation changes with regard to any utility disruption."
Both Spain and Portugal have become hot real estate markets for the data centre industry in recent years. Currently, Spain has 156 data centres in operation and Portugal has 41.
After businesses and infrastructure providers across Spain and Portugal would have turned to emergency power strategies, it perhaps reminds the data centre industry of the importance of having energy resilience as part of a wider strategy.
“Not only is it about prevention, but also how quickly and safely businesses can restore power when disruption strikes,” explains Andrew Gordon, Managing Director UK&I at Eaton.
“Right now, organisations across Spain and Portugal will be working to get back up and running again to ensure financial and reputational damage is kept to a minimum. Even for those unaffected, this should be a wake-up call to make sure they are investing in the right technologies that can safeguard them from such costly and disruptive situations.”
This event is perhaps reminiscent of what happened in the UK in March 2025, where a substation fire caused its busiest airport, London Heathrow, to lose power. The incident led to questions over the country’s national infrastructure and if its grid is resilient enough.
“This is a very rare and significant event, and we are very sorry for the very significant level of disruption that was caused,” Alice Delahunty, President – UK Electricity Transmission at the UK National Grid, shared in a meeting about the incident in the UK House of Commons.
“We really welcome the investigation and the opportunities for us to learn across what is a multi-party event, with many interfaces and many considerations for resilience.”
Making the grid more resilient
Global data centre and real estate organisations have been investing in Spain and Portugal, given their growing presence within Europe (outside of the FLAP-D markets).
Early in 2024, the data centre sector in Spain was predicted to have a very strong outlook by Research and Markets and is expected to grow from US$1.9bn (2023) to US$2.85bn at a CAGR of 6.99%.
The country’s location is a huge advantage, as the country’s submarine cables in the south help connect Europe to Africa. A strong number of technology companies currently invest in data centres in Madrid, including EDGNEX Data Centers by DAMAC, Microsoft, Pure DC and Prime Data.
Likewise in Portugal, Start Campus recently inaugurated SIN01, the largest data centre ever built and operated in the country. SIN01 is the first building of the 1.2 GW SINES Data Campus, a leading gigascale cloud, AI and HPC data centre campus. The facility boasts fully secured grid power and a ready-to-develop site.
Looking ahead, an event of this scale acts as a reminder of how crucial operational resilience has become.
“As our cities become more reliant on software to run, preparing for the impact of these large-scale outages needs to be an absolute priority for government and private sector organisations alike,” says Bob Wambach, VP Product Portfolio at Dynatrace.
“This is a real wake-up call to all businesses – particularly those that work in public sector or utilities businesses – to prioritise operational resilience in order to prevent these types of incidents from occurring in the first place.”
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