Spain's massive blackout: Loss of power cost €1.6 ($1.8) billion

"No signs were found [that the outage was caused by a cyberattack on the Red Electrica network operator – editor's note], and that's good news," declared Aagesen, who is the Minister for Ecological Transition. On April 29, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had stated that his government did not rule out any causes of the outage, including a cyberattack.

On Wednesday, Aagesen reported that the widespread outage on April 28 caused power supply disruptions across Spain and also affected neighboring Portugal. The blackout started with the loss of 2.2 gigawatts of power in the southern part of the country – at substations in Granada, Badajoz, and Seville. These failures were said to have triggered a series of disconnections from the network. The power supply was restored the next day.

According to Reuters, Aagesen noted that several investigations are ongoing regarding the outage, and Spanish authorities provided information for the first time on where the blackout began. She also admitted that determining its cause will take some time and may not yield a definitive answer.

At the end of April, the president of the Spanish employers' organization CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, estimated that the power outage impacting the Iberian Peninsula will cost the economy around 1.6 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars), which accounts for 0.1 percent of the gross domestic product.

Garamendi emphasized the scale of the problems caused by the outage. He indicated that refineries would need weeks to restore full capacity, and large blast furnaces might have suffered significant damage. "This is a huge impact on the economy," stated the head of the employers' organization during a conversation with journalists.