MADRID: Spain’s government on Wednesday ruled out a cyberattack on the national grid operator as the cause of the huge blackout of unknown origin that crippled the Iberian Peninsula last month.
Authorities have been scrambling to find answers more than two weeks after the April 28 outage cut telecommunications, halted transport and plunged cities into darkness across Spain and Portugal.
Spanish grid operator Red Electrica said it had detected no “cybersecurity incident” during the crisis, after the government had refused to rule out any potential explanation.
“After analysing all the relevant data, we have not found indications that the system operator was targeted by a cyberattack,“ Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen told parliament.
Aagesen provided a detailed chronology of events, saying two major power fluctuations were recorded in the half-hour before the grid collapse at 12:33 pm (1033 GMT).
She also revealed the precise location of three incidents that triggered the outage, substations in the southern provinces of Granada, Badajoz and Seville.
Authorities are analysing a possible link between the fluctuations and the blackout alongside hundreds of millions of pieces of data by electricity companies and Red Electrica, Aagesen said.
She also hit out at criticism from the right-wing opposition, which has questioned the Socialist-led government’s increasing reliance on renewable energy and a planned phase-out of nuclear power.
The investigation into the outage “will last as long as necessary” and “we will not allow hastiness to take us away from the truth”, Aagesen said.
