A frantic search is on to figure out what, exactly, caused Spain and Portugal to lose power Monday, leaving millions of people without access to basic modern necessities.
The answer will have serious ramifications for the two countries — and for Europe as a whole.
The EU has been pressing the Iberian Peninsula, which has long operated as an energy island within the bloc, to link up better to Europe’s grids. Already on Monday, specialists were debating whether such connections could have helped prevent the massive blackouts — or put more countries at risk of experiencing spillover effects.
There was also hand-wringing throughout the day about whether the outages were the work of cyber saboteurs launching a strike on Europe — even as no evidence emerged suggesting that was the case.
