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Rabat — Spain woke up to a major telecommunications crisis early Saturday when phone and internet services crashed across the country.
The outage reportedly struck around 5 a.m., knocking out service for customers of all major providers, including Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil, and O2, according to outage tracker Downdetector.
Most of mainland Spain felt the impact. Internet users in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Murcia, and Bilbao reported complete signal loss and internet failures.
The blackout also spread to the Basque Country, Aragon, and the Valencian Community. While the Balearic Islands escaped largely unaffected, some residents in the Canary Islands experienced connectivity problems.
The situation turned serious when several emergency 112 lines went down. Regional authorities quickly published alternative phone numbers for police and emergency services.
Spanish broadcaster RTVC shared backup contact information for local police, national police, and the Guardia Civil.
Telefonica, Spain’s biggest telecommunications company, confirmed, their engineers are working to fix the problem. Emergency lines in Aragon have returned to normal operation, but many regions still face disruptions.
Read also: Spain Hails Morocco for Key Contribution to Blackout Recovery
Local newspaper El Correo suggested the blackout might stem from a network upgrade, though officials haven’t confirmed this theory.
This crisis comes just four weeks following a similar major nationwide power outage that triggered panic across Spain and Portugal.
That incident affected roughly 50 million people, causing widespread chaos by cutting power, stopping public transportation, disabling traffic lights, and shutting down ATMs.
Following investigations, the Spanish government confirmed last week that the major blackout was not, contrary to earlier reports, the result of a cyberattack by a foreign power or pro-Russian hackers.
