The acting prime minister of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, has requested on Tuesday that the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators of the European Union carried out an independent audit on the blackout that affected the Iberian Peninsula on Monday. “We want a complete investigation of the causes of the blackout. We need rapid investigation and urgent responses,” Montenegro said at a press conference. The president has also announced that his government will create a technical commission to study how to act in the future and avoid the failures that were committed on Monday.
The hours that Portugal passed without electricity reflected two things to clearly: a copy of citizens and an extreme vulnerability of essential infrastructure. It illuminated almost blinding all the failures of the services that lack Plan B to continue working. Only hospitals and some public buildings with generators managed to maintain the activity, although under minimum. But not even the National Medical Emergency Institute, which serves the emergencies, and many health centers were prepared for this. In some moments the calls to request an ambulance took more than 40 minutes to be treated, according to Rui Lázaro, president of the Hospital Emergency Technicians Union, to the newspaper Public.
This Tuesday the country is recovering normality progressively. The meters, although with delay, circulate again. The schools have opened and hospitals have resumed the planned activity, trying to respond in the next few days to all delayed consultations and surgeries during the blackout. At 9.30 today, the 6.3 million customers with an electricity contract had recovered the service and only subtracted 800 households without light due to failures not related to the blackout, according to the government.
At some point, in addition, the electoral debate will be organized between the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, and the socialist candidate Pedro Nuno Santos, who should have been held on Monday at 22.00. Although the blackout occurred three weeks after the elections, almost all opposition leaders have refused to use the matter to campaign, with the exception of the ultra -right -wing leader André Ventura, who has claimed an urgent audit. “We are in an energy crisis because we are dependent on the import of energy. And this is responsible, PS and PSD, which made us sign millionaire contracts with the producers and that made us dependent on Spain when closing our coal plants,” he accused during an interview in the SIC chain. “We have two leaders in Spain and Portugal who are the horny of Europe,” he said.
In the historic cut, the exits resumed although the delays and cancellations were constant during the day, with about thirty suspended flights. The special authorization of the government so that the airlines could operate during the past morning did not serve to solve the great jam generated by the suspension of almost all the exits scheduled for Monday. There has been no explanation of Ana, the company that manages all the airports of Portugal, to clarify why the activity in Porto and Faro, although limited, has been possible, unlike what happened in the capital. The Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, explained in an interview on the Now Channel that the activity in Lisbon will only normalize “in two or three days.”
The Government convened its second Extraordinary Council of Ministers in 24 hours. The informative blackout, which joined the general blackout during the first hours, is one of the main criticisms that the Executive is receiving. The other is the vulnerability of the Portuguese energy system. In his Monday statements, Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, tried to take responsibility for what happened. He recalled that and that the Portuguese fell apart because, at the moment of the fall, it was importing 30% of the electricity of the neighboring country because it was cheaper. The sudden disappearance of that supply at 11.33 on Monday (local time) left 93% of lusal consumers. “Spain had the help of France and Morocco, but Portugal only has international connections with Spain,” Montenegro recalled.
Before an energy crisis such as the one lived yesterday, some specialists and politicians recalled decisions taken in the past that do not help public control over essential infrastructure. The National Electricity (REN) grid, which is responsible for the transport of electricity, was privatized during the wave of sales of public companies forced during the country’s intervention by the troika (European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank). Also the airport concessionaire is in the hands of the French company Vinci. Mariana Mortágua, Coordinator of Bloco de Esquerda, took the opportunity to claim the nationalization of the REN, whose privatization considered a “serious mistake.”
