OMM Newsroom
More than 50,000 customers were left without electricity on Spain’s Canary Island of La Palma early Monday as torrential rain battered the island, authorities said, according to Anadolu Agency.
National grid operator “Red Electrica” said power had been restored to about 75% of those affected by midmorning, roughly four and a half hours after the outage began.
The Canary Islands government said electricity was lost across the island at 6:42 a.m. local time (0642 GMT).
Lightning strike and power plant failure
A lightning strike hit an electrical substation at around 4 a.m., starting a fire that disrupted medium- and low-voltage lines. Service was initially restored, but a later failure at the Los Guinchos power plant triggered the island-wide blackout. The cause of the disconnection remained unclear.
The island’s port, airport, General Hospital and Hospital de Dolores continued operating on backup power.
Heavy rain prompts highest alert
The regional government issued its highest rainfall alert for eastern La Palma at 2 a.m. Emergency officials said the area recorded 62 millimeters (2.4 inches) of rain in one hour and 138 millimeters (5.4 inches) over 12 hours.
Firefighters also responded to a storm-related house fire, while landslides were reported. They were less severe than anticipated, Spanish broadcaster “Cadena SER” reported.
An orange alert for heavy rainfall remained in effect until Tuesday morning.
The Canary Islands were unaffected by the April 2025 blackout that left mainland Spain and Portugal without electricity for around 10 hours.
A European expert panel concluded in March that the earlier outage resulted from multiple factors, including failures in voltage control that caused generators to disconnect in succession.
