Spain and Portugal have been hit by a massive power outage, affecting transport, telephone lines and traffic lights in major cities.
Barcelona, Seville and Valencia were all hit by the outage on Monday afternoon, with authorities scrambling to bring systems back online.
Cities in Portugal, including Lisbon, were also affected by the blackouts. One official said the problem appeared to be with the electricity distribution network in Spain.
The cause of the outage is not yet clear, but a Spanish official said they could not yet rule out the possibility of a cyber attack, either.
Red Eléctrica, the Spanish power distributor, said in the immediate aftermath that restoring power to large parts of the country could take 6-10 hours.
But Portugal’s grid operator said it believes it could take as long as a week to fully restore power.
Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) said that the outages appeared to have been caused by ‘extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain’.
‘Due to the complexity of the phenomenon and the need to rebalance electricity flows internationally, it is estimated that full normalisation of the network could take up to a week,’ they warned.
Power is steadily being recovered in the north and south of the peninsula.
And French high-voltage grid operator RTE also said this afternoon it had managed to restore power to the south-west of the country.
Follow below for all the latest updates on Europe’s power outage.