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Don’t Blame It on the Sun: The Iberian Blackout and the Politics of Power
This is what happens when a fossil grid collides with a renewable reality
It started like any spring day on the open road.
My in-laws were riding through Andalusia on their motorcycle — sun overhead, wind in their jackets — when they pulled off for a lunch-with-a-view at the Sierra Nevada ski resort. They parked the bike, ditched their helmets, grabbed a gondola pass, and joined a dozen others for a smooth ride up the ridge.
Halfway up, the lift stopped. Then jolted. And never again moved.
No staff showed up for an explanation. And no signal in their phones allowed for a quick search for an answer.
Four hours later, with no water, no food, and the panic of strangers trapped in a glass box swinging 20 meters above the slopes, they were lowered down by rope. Dazed and exhausted, they assumed it was a fluke. A mechanical glitch, maybe.
It wasn’t.
The gondola was just one pin in a continent-wide collapse — the largest blackout in living memory across Europe. Over 55 million people across Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and even the Basque region of France were thrown into the dark — airports grounded, metros stalled, traffic…
