That conclusion has been supported by the operator of Spain’s national grid, Red Eléctrica, which has located where outages began on Monday. Two separate incidents of power outages led to instability in the grid leading to a “breakdown in interconnections with France,” leaving the Iberian grid isolated.

MADRID/LISBON (Reuters) -A huge power outage brought parts of Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday, grounding planes, halting public transport, causing panic buying and leaving the two countries scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.