Spain hit by major phone and internet blackout
The outage comes just four weeks after a nationwide electricity failure rocked the Iberian Peninsula
Spain is grappling with a massive telecommunications blackout as mobile and internet services went down early Tuesday, disrupting connectivity across the country. The outage comes just four weeks after a nationwide electricity failure rocked the Iberian Peninsula.
Leading service providers — Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digimobil, and O2 — are all affected, leaving millions of customers without access to calls, messages, or mobile data. According to DownDetector, disruptions began around 5:00 am, rapidly spreading to major cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, Murcia, Seville, and Bilbao, according to news agencies.
The outage has also compromised emergency response services. In regions like Valencia and Aragon, the EU-wide emergency number 112 became unreachable. Local governments were forced to activate alternative emergency hotlines to ensure public safety.
The disruption has severely impacted businesses, with many unable to access systems or operate digitally. According to initial reports, the issue stems from a failed network update by Telefónica, Spain’s largest telecom operator and the second largest company in the country. Telefónica operates across 18 countries, making the incident potentially significant beyond Spain.
A spokesperson from Telefónica confirmed to ABC News that engineers are working urgently to resolve the problem.
“A routine network update encountered unforeseen technical issues that caused the widespread outage,” the spokesperson said.
The incident follows closely on the heels of the April 28 blackout, dubbed the 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout, which left millions in Spain and Portugal without power for approximately 10 hours.
While the government ruled out cyberattacks as the cause of that event, the recurrence of large-scale infrastructure failures is raising concerns about system resilience and oversight.
Notably, La Palma and the Canary Islands, which were unaffected by April’s power cut, are also experiencing connectivity issues for the first time in this wave.
