Portugal Spain Power Outage Disrupts Madrid Open
The outage has affected millions of people, with mobile phone networks going down and people having to use radio for news. Power restoration efforts are underway, but the problem is not yet resolved, and the cause of the outage remains unknown.
A widespread power outage affecting parts of Spain and Portugal has led to the cancellation of play at the Mutua Madrid Open, with two singles matches and one doubles match underway when power was lost at 12:34 p.m. local time.
The outage prevented the use of electronic line calling systems and also left a spider cam dangling over the court. The No. 16 seed Grigor Dimitrov held a match point on return at 5-2, 30/40 in the second set against Fearnley, but Fearnley held serve and reclaimed the break in the next game, keeping alive his hopes of a comeback win. Another singles match, featuring Denis Shapovalov, was also suspended before play was cancelled for the day.
The power outage has caused widespread disruption in Spain and Portugal, with traffic lights shut off and rail traffic brought to a halt in Spain, and the metro closed in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal. Spain has declared a state of emergency, with the cause of the outage remaining unknown, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez ruling out a cyber attack. Over half of Spain's power has been restored, but authorities are still trying to establish what caused the outage.
The power outage has led to chaos on roads, with traffic congestion and closed airports, and has left people stranded on trains. The Spanish government has increased security deployments and is urging people to limit their mobile phone use. The regions of Madrid, Andalusia, and Extremadura have requested the central government to take over public order and other functions.