Miguel told me this wild, but true story about his day during the Spanish blackout a couple of month ago (April 28, 2025) that took over 10 hours to fix.

Blackout
It hits without warning. In the middle of the day, sun blazing, and suddenly the city plunges into darkness. At first, you think it’s just a normal outage, you experienced one of those a couple of years ago, and it took only a few minutes for things to return to normal. Then an hour passes. Still no power. The head of your department walks in to tell everyone they can go home.

You step outside and into chaos. The blackout isn’t just in your building, it’s everywhere. Subways have stopped cold. People are spilling out of underground stations, using their phones like torches. Traffic lights are dead, intersections jammed with cars and confused pedestrians. Buses aren’t running. Trams are frozen. The city feels like it’s holding its breath.

You look at your phone. The flashlight works, but that’s about it. No calls. No messages. No maps. Anything that requires a signal or a connection is gone.

Luckily, you live in the city. A brisk walk should get you home. As you start moving, a strange realization creeps in: you don’t actually know how to get there. You’ve always relied on public transport and your navigation app. The streets blur together without it. You stare at an old paper map someone hands you, but it’s just lines and symbols. Useless.

Then, a stroke of luck. An older colleague from the office overhears you. You tell him your address, and he nods, pointing you in the right direction with the kind of confidence that only comes from decades of walking the city. You follow his directions, uncertain at first. But as you get closer, landmarks begin to look familiar, a corner café, a mural on a wall, the curve of a street you’ve passed a hundred times but never really noticed.

And then… home.

You take the stairs to your apartment, again using your phone as a flashlight. The fridge is silent. The freezer is holding on for now. You sit in the dark living room, surrounded by quiet, and realize how much you’ve depended on invisible systems, and how quickly they can vanish.