One year after a cascading grid failure plunged the entire Iberian Peninsula into darkness, a Portuguese parliamentary working group has released a comprehensive report recommending fundamental changes to how the country prepares for and responds to power outages. The report, presented on Tuesday, acknowledges that the government's initial response was guided by "intuition" rather than any established protocol.
The blackout, which struck on 28 April 2025, affected all of Portugal and Spain, leaving millions without electricity for hours. A subsequent technical analysis revealed that the collapse was triggered not by a single fault but by a series of compounding failures within 90 seconds. Voltage surged across multiple nodes in the Spanish grid while output from large renewable energy plants dropped by roughly 500 megawatts, reducing the reactive power those generators absorbed and pushing voltage higher. A transformer at a substation near Granada then tripped its overvoltage protection, precipitating the wider collapse.
Key Recommendations for Resilience
The parliamentary report proposes that hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, and emergency services be required to maintain a minimum of 72 hours of energy autonomy. All other critical infrastructure would need to sustain at least 24 hours. It also recommends raising the fuel storage limit at such facilities from 500 litres to 3,000 litres—a ceiling already common in other European countries—and formally classifying food retailers and pharmacies as critical infrastructure.
The working group further calls for a structural overhaul of SIRESP, the integrated emergency and security communications network, and the development of an emergency alert system independent of commercial mobile networks. It also urges faster activation of emergency procedures, citing delays during last year's outage, and a review of the compensation framework for electricity supply interruptions.
The government operations centre, CORGOV, was created in November 2025 in direct response to the blackout, after Presidency Minister António Leitão Amaro acknowledged that there had been no action plan for serious crises. He told the working group's final hearing last Thursday that "the country needs to do more."
Following the technical report's publication in March, the Portuguese government referred the question of compensation to the national energy regulator, ERSE. Environment and Energy Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho stated, "Now is the time for the national regulator to make its assessment and indicate the way forward with regard to compensation."
Public Preparedness and European Context
The European Commission responded to last year's outage by activating its resilience strategy and recommending that households prepare an emergency kit sufficient to last 72 hours, including drinking water, non-perishable food, a first-aid kit, and a battery-operated radio or torch. Euronews spoke to people in Lisbon about whether they had acted on that advice, and responses were mixed.
Filomena Nobre, a pensioner, said she had bought a battery radio and spare batteries, and packed a rucksack with a blanket, a whistle, and other supplies. "I also prepared for a possible earthquake," she added. Manuel Oliveira, 77, said he already kept candles, a battery radio, and tinned food at home and could survive another outage—although "not for more than a week." Others said they had the basics but had made no deliberate preparations. "I have tinned food and money at home," said Sónia, a shopkeeper. "I just wouldn't know the news because I didn't have my radio."
Luís Latas, a pensioner who was on holiday during the blackout, said he rushed to a supermarket to buy water and toilet paper. "It felt like the world was ending," he said. "Without mobile phones, without anything, people panic."
The blackout has also spurred broader discussions about energy resilience across Europe. As countries like Spain, France, and Portugal race to expand renewables, the vulnerability of interconnected grids to cascading failures remains a pressing concern. The Portuguese report's recommendations, if implemented, could serve as a model for other member states grappling with similar risks.
