A massive phone and internet outage occurred in Spain on Tuesday, just four weeks after a nationwide power outage.
On May 20, all mobile networks across Spain are down again. All major providers, including Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil and O2, are experiencing disruptions. According to the Spanish website Down Detector, as a result of the power outage, which began around 5 a.m., customers are unable to make calls, receive text messages or use their mobile data.
Problems have been reported in all major cities, including Madrid, Malaga, Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia, Seville and Bilbao. The blackout also affected emergency phone lines, as the pan-European emergency number 112 became unavailable in some parts of Spain.
Experts believe that the problem was most likely caused by a serious failure in the Telefónica system, which operates most of Spain’s mobile networks. This multinational company is the second largest in Spain and operates telecommunications in 18 countries, making it one of the largest phone operators and mobile communications providers in the world.
On April 28, millions of people in Spain and Portugal were plunged into darkness for about 10 hours. At the time, the Spanish government ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the April power outage.
