Iberian power blackout halts container terminals at Spanish ports

Started

2025-04-28 (28 April 2025)

Ended

2025-04-29 (29 April 2025)

Status

ended

Type

Infrastructure failure

Severity

1 Minor

Scope

regional

Chokepoints

None

Ports

Algeciras, Valencia, Barcelona

Lanes

None

Countries

Spain, Portugal

Confidence

medium: The blackout, its restoration times and its cause are documented by the grid operator, the Spanish government and ENTSO-E, but the port level detail rests on trade and regional press reporting of what the port authorities said, rather than on port authority statements still online.

First reported

2025-04-28 (28 April 2025)

• Severity basis: Port level stoppage under 24 hours, since container handling stopped at the affected Spanish ports from the early afternoon of 2025-04-28 and had restarted by the morning of 2025-04-29.

1. 2025-04-28Electricity supply fails across mainland Spain and Portugal in the early afternoon. Red Eléctrica activates its response protocol and begins restoring the transmission grid. [s3]
2. 2025-04-28The Algeciras port authority activates a crisis committee and level one of its self protection plan. Both container terminals stop, the customs system is unavailable so lorries cannot be processed, and ferry links to Ceuta and Tánger Med run on a standby generator. [s4]
3. 2025-04-29Red Eléctrica reports that all transmission substations were energised by 04:00 and that 99.95 per cent of peninsular demand was restored by 07:00. [s3]
4. 2025-04-29Trade press reports that container terminals at Algeciras restarted in the morning, that Barcelona had resumed after its terminals stopped, and that Valencia regained power at 21:30 the previous evening and was working with accumulated traffic. [s5]
5. 2025-06-17The Spanish government presents the report of its committee on the electricity crisis, which attributes the failure to an overvoltage of multifactorial origin and finds no evidence of a cyber attack. [s1]
6. 2026-03-20ENTSO-E publishes the final report of its expert panel, which attributes the blackout to a combination of interacting factors in voltage and reactive power control and to cascading generator disconnections. [s2]

No corrections to this record as of 2026-09-24 (24 September 2026).

1. [s1] Government of Spain, El Gobierno presenta el informe sobre las causas del apagón, que se debió a una sobretensión de origen "multifactorial", published 2025-06-17 (17 June 2025), accessed 2026-09-15. Archived copy. (official)
2. [s2] ENTSO-E, ENTSO-E Publishes Expert Panel Final Report on 28 April 2025 Blackout in Spain and Portugal, published 2026-03-20 (20 March 2026), accessed 2026-09-15. Archived copy. (official)
3. [s3] Red Eléctrica, Red Eléctrica's response to the incident of 28 April, published 2025-04-28 (28 April 2025), accessed 2026-09-15. Archived copy. (official)
4. [s4] El Estrecho Digital, El apagón eléctrico en España paraliza las terminales de contenedores del puerto de Algeciras, published 2025-04-28 (28 April 2025), accessed 2026-09-15. Archived copy. (press)
5. [s5] Diario del Puerto, Los puertos retoman su actividad con relativa normalidad, published 2025-04-29 (29 April 2025), accessed 2026-09-15. Archived copy. (press)

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Plain text

World Freight Monitor. "Iberian power blackout halts container terminals at Spanish ports." Last updated 2026-09-24 (24 September 2026). https://worldfreightmonitor.com/events/2025/power-blackout-spain-portugal-ports-2025/

APA

World Freight Monitor. (2026). Iberian power blackout halts container terminals at Spanish ports. World Freight Monitor. https://worldfreightmonitor.com/events/2025/power-blackout-spain-portugal-ports-2025/

BibTeX

@misc{wfm_power_blackout_spain_portugal_ports_2025,
  author = {{World Freight Monitor}},
  title = {Iberian power blackout halts container terminals at Spanish ports},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Last updated 2026-09-24},
  url = {https://worldfreightmonitor.com/events/2025/power-blackout-spain-portugal-ports-2025/}
}