Thanks for joining us; we’ll keep you updated here with all the latest news and developments.
To start us off, PA is reporting that there is still no power at the Caja Magica tennis complex that is hosting the Madrid Open this morning, putting in jeopardy the resumption of play a day after several matches had to be cancelled.
Tournament organisers said the opening of the gates for fans was delayed until 11am local time (0900 GMT) because of the outage. They did not immediately announce any schedule change regarding the matches.
“Due to reasons beyond the organisations control, the Caja Mgica is still without power supply as of this morning. As a result, the opening of the gates has been delayed, and we expect to open them at 11 a.m.,” they said.
We’ll bring you more on this story as it develops.
Lights flickered back to life in Spain and Portugal early Tuesday after a massive blackout hit the Iberian peninsula, stranding passengers in trains and hundreds of elevators while millions saw phone and internet coverage die.
More than 60 per cent of Spain’s national electricity supply had been restored by the end of Monday, the REE power operator said. Lights came on again in Madrid and in Portugal’s capital.
Panic-stricken shoppers across Spain and even Portugal were seen clearing supermarket shelves and leaving grocery stores empty amid chaos.
Alarming pictures posted on social media show bare supermarket shelves after panic-shopping swept across the affected regions.
Footage shows people forming huge queues outside grocery stores and ATMs to stockpile essential items amid fears the mayhem could last for days.
Credit: X
Credit: X
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said “all the potential causes” were being analysed and warned the public “not to speculate” because of the risk of “misinformation”.
Sanchez said about 15 gigawatts of electricity, more than half of the power being consumed at the time, “suddenly disappeared” in about five seconds.
The PM was unable to say when power would be completely restored in Spain and warned that some workers would have to stay home on Tuesday.
Just a month ago, a catastrophic power failure at one of the substations near Heathrow airport caused chaos.
The substation was the site of an enormous blaze, with 25,000 litres of cooling oil igniting in a fireball.
Although the cause of the fire is still unknown, it forced Heathrow to shut down for 18 hours, causing travel misery for 300,000 passengers.
More than 100 flights arriving and departing were cancelled.
Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police initially led the investigation before the force confirmed the fire was believed to be non-suspicious.
Credit: AP