While the unprecedented outage that brought mainland Spain to a standstill on Monday did not affect the Canaries directly in terms of power cuts, knock-on effects were noticeable in the islands.
Mobile phone networks, the Internet and cash machines were hit for several hours, prompting the Canarian government to call on the public to make sparing use of them so as not to overload an already depleted system.
Air traffic across Spain was badly hit by the outage and flights had to be cancelled, including to and from the Canaries. An estimated one thousand tourists were unable to leave Fuerteventura on Monday and Tuesday, with local hotels – working closely with the island’s Tourist Board – pulling out all the stops to find last-minute accommodation for the stranded holidaymakers.
Parents of nearly a hundred schoolchildren from Gran Canaria had an anxious two days since Monday waiting for updates on when they would be able to return home from a school trip to Barcelona. The pupils, from the IES José Arencibia Gil school in Telde, were due to fly back on Monday evening but ended up having to sleep on the floor of airport that night due to the outage, which impacted heavily on operations at Barcelona. The stranded teenagers and their teachers were unable to make contact with parents for many hours due to the lack of phone and Internet coverage. The issue was eventually resolved when then the Canarian Dept of Education intervened to persuade airline Vueling to lay on a charter flight to bring them back to Gran Canaria, which is expected to happen today (Wednesday).
Meanwhile, dozens of pupils from Malaga, who were due to fly back from a school trip to Tenerife when the blackout hit Spain, may not be able to return home until Friday due to the knock-on effects on airline operations of the massive power blackout.
Throughout the outage and the knock-on effects here, the authorities urged the public to rely on official channels for information and steer clear of fake news sources, which were having a field day with conspiracy theories. The situation also saw the government reiterate previous advice – regularly issued when storms hit the Canaries – to keep an emergency kit ready at all times at home, with a battery-powered radio, torch, back-up battery for mobile phone, food essentials that do not require cooking, and any medication needed by suffers of chronic conditions.
