Plenty is being written about the causes of last Monday’s massive power cut in Spain and Portugal, and the lessons to be learned about energy resilience and crisis management. However, I want to share some of the personal insights I gained from that day.
A peninsula in the dark
I live in Spain, but on Monday 28 April, we were on holiday in northern Portugal. At around 11.30am Portuguese time, our pet sitter called from our home on the eastern coast of Spain to say the wi-fi was down and ask what she should do. We were just telling her to check if there was power when we realised our wi-fi wasn’t working either. I flicked a light switch, and nothing. What a weird and unlikely coincidence, we thought! You know the rest of the story.
We managed just fine: we went for a walk, read books, found a little shop that sold us salad ingredients and things in tins and jars so we could put together a cold supper, and had an early night. A WhatsApp message from our family in Spain reached us mid-afternoon, so we knew they were safe.
But it was unnerving. The internet stayed alive for a while, long enough for us to know the whole peninsula was affected, but then we had no information online. Luckily, we had a small radio with us, and being near the Spanish border, we could receive some news (we don’t speak much Portuguese).
Fragile threads of modern life
The key lesson I learned was about how ill-prepared we were as tourists, and how scarily dependent on mobiles and the internet we have become when travelling. Last Monday was a school day across most of Europe. Spain and Portugal received millions of tourists over Easter, but most had gone home by last weekend. Imagine if there is a power cut on this scale in the height of the tourist season, with the costas full of tourists with young families. They suddenly find themselves without power and, most importantly, communications, in a country where they don’t speak the language.
When the power fails, communications providers have their own generators to keep internet coverage going. On Monday, they instantly switched from 5G to 4G, making everything slower but extending their generator life. Everyone was frantically searching for information and trying to contact family, putting additional pressure on the network and running down power supplies. We had slow, patchy internet coverage for the first hour after the power cut, then occasional blips when messages sent hours earlier finally reached our phones. From mid-afternoon, there was nothing.
So here are my lessons for tourists this summer.
Know where you are staying
It sounds crazy, but my partner had no idea what our apartment address was, and I could only vaguely remember it. The address was saved in the booking app, which I could no longer access. We were picked up at the bus station by our hosts and taken to the apartment on the first day.
I put a pin on our location in Google Maps, and for the first couple of days, we used that to navigate our way home through the winding streets of this historic town. By day three, I could find my way back unaided, but if the power cut had happened on the first day, I’m not sure I could. And my partner relied on me to do the navigating, so he’s not sure he could find his way home at all!
If you are travelling with a group or family, make sure every single member has that address and a map, either on paper or at least as a screenshot. Check that your kids know how to use a static map – there’s no “you are here” blue dot when the internet is down.
Agree on a meeting point
If your group splits up, make sure you have a meeting point, and everyone knows how to find it, without a phone. This is especially vital if you have children who are old enough to go off alone. I heard of one mother who couldn’t contact her 13-year-old daughter for eight hours on Monday. She knew she was with responsible adults, but was still frantic with worry, naturally.
Print, screenshot, or download everything
Boarding passes, travel tickets, bookings, maps. Do not rely on apps. At the weekend, we went on a day trip to a nearby town. We assumed we could buy tickets at the station or on the bus, but thanks to modern technology, the driver only accepted pre-bought tickets on the bus company’s app. He explained this to us using Google Translate. We could go into the app there and then, and we also bought our return tickets.
In the event of a total power cut like Monday’s, the driver would probably have believed us if we said we had bought a ticket, or let us ride home for free, but communicating in a language you don’t speak would only add to the stress (Google Translate doesn’t work anymore, remember!)
Have cash
Bring euros with you or withdraw some at the airport when you land. You may never need them, everywhere accepts cards and mobile payments now, but if you leave it until the second day of your holiday to find a cashpoint, it may be too late. On Monday, all payment systems were down, but we had no problem getting supplies from the corner grocery store. You may need to pay for a taxi to get you back to your hotel, or for a meal in a restaurant (many that cook with gas managed to stay open on Monday).
Keep everything charged up
Every opportunity you have, charge up your devices. Carry power banks, and make sure they are charged up too. All those screenshots of maps, addresses and tickets will only be any use if the phone is charged (paper printouts are better if possible).
Light up
Ideally, carry a battery-powered torch. The torch on your mobile phone is great in an emergency, but it will run the battery down quickly. When you arrive, check your accommodation for torches, candles and matches. Our hosts had left all these in a drawer and messaged us to tell us where to find them. Fortunately, we got the message. In future, we will check on arrival, and stock up ourselves if they are not provided.
Don’t panic!
Finally, there is no need to change or cancel your holiday plans. These power cuts were hopefully a one-off event. Equally, something like this could happen wherever you are, at home or on holiday. But, if something like Monday’s power cut did happen on your holiday, taking a few basic precautions like these could make all the difference between a funny anecdote on Facebook and a horror story in the tabloid press.
And, you never know, so long as you and your family are together and safe, you might even enjoy spending a few hours in each other’s company without the distraction of screens and electronic devices.
