RE: Blackout in Spain, Portugal and parts of France. Decoding "Rare Atmospheric Phenomenon": This either means they "don't know" or "don't want to tell" you the real cause.

What a crazy day it was! I'm Portuguese and I was working in the office yesterday. The lights went out at 11h30, but we still had internet, because the office has a generator for the internet. I was alone in my workspace because the other 2 people were working from home. I was browsing my phone, and 5 minutes later, I decided to get out, and I saw everyone else very agitated. I learned that it was the whole country plus Spain. Later, we started hearing that other countries were also having the same issue, and we all thought cyber attack from Russia.

I had no lunch, so I went home since I had something to eat. However, I have electric blinds and I didn't raise them in the morning, so I didn't even have natural light at home. I went to my in-laws' so that I wasn't in total darkness. My fiance and I went back home at 19h, since we still had some food left that we could eat cold, and we didn't want it to go to waste. Just as we were about to eat, the lights came back on, so we were able to heat our food.

The whole day, the internet on the phone was working on and off, depending on the provider and where we were. Also, we were running low on battery. I was using my work laptop to charge my phone, but it was very slow.

After that, it was time to try to contact family members to make sure they were well and if they had electricity yet. The worst part was not being very prepared (we should be ready for these types of emergencies) and not knowing how long it would take. There was some information saying that it could take up to 3 days to be restaured and that would suck. Some supermarkets were closed, others weren't, but they had huge lines. People certainly panicked.