El Apagón

"The Blackout"

Since moving to Valencia in August 2024, I’ve experienced two major events here.

The first was DANA in October, which was the major flooding around Valencia. It was also my first glimpse of the community effort Spaniards put into helping one another when the chips are down.

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

Around the time just after DANA, we had to return a rental car to the airport. As we got nearer and nearer, we saw lines of people walking along the sides of the roads carrying shovels, buckets, and dressed in work clothes. Some had hard hats on.

Then the realization hit me.

They were walking to help.

Pretty much all public transit had been shut down during that period, so the only way the people of Valencia could assist their neighbors was by walking or driving – and since roads were closed in the flooded areas, driving was out of the question.

So they walked.

I had never seen anything like it – not even in Nashville during the 2010 flood. There, people helped as they were able, and it was amazing.

But this was amazing in a whole other way.

On Monday, we returned from a trip to Mallorca, landing just as news broke of a massive power outage affecting the entire Iberian Peninsula and parts of France. My first thought was that it couldn’t be true. My second was cyberattack.

It’s rare that a country – much less multiple countries – experiences a complete blackout (el apagón). But Spain and Portugal were in the dark. Cell service was collapsing, and there was no power anywhere unless a generator was producing it.

At the airport, we were in a generator bubble. I had WiFi, and things appeared to be operating normally. Our first inkling that things could get rough was when we couldn’t get on the metro to head home. The last time we saw that happen was DANA. When we arrived at the taxi stand, the line was just beginning to grow. The longer we stood there, the longer it got. One young woman sobbed behind us, and I warned our kids not to stare because we could not know what had caused her such distress.

Photo by Francesco Zivoli on Unsplash

When it was finally our turn to get in a taxi, we loaded up and started our trip. But our driver asked if we had cash, and I experienced momentary panic. Did we? The card reader was down, and the driver had no way to accept a credit card.

We rarely carry cash. It’s a habit I dropped long ago, and I pay for practically everything with my phone. So does my husband. A couple of months ago, I grabbed some euros from the ATM. And since we rarely use cash, I still had one €50 note hanging out in my wallet.

“¡Sí!” I said. “I have cash.”

The ride from the airport to our apartment took about 35 minutes. It’s usually a quick 20-minute trip – sometimes less. There were no traffic lights, and traffic was a mess, but not as chaotic as we anticipated.

Getting up to our apartment was yet another challenge. We live on the highest floor of our building – and the elevators were, of course, not operational. Will and I sized up the bags, and he and our son dragged them up all eleven flights of stairs, taking breaks every two flights or so, because Mama has an overpacking problem.

Once inside our apartment, we realized we had no groceries because vacation, and we had no radio, cell service, or power. In other words, we had no way of knowing what was happening in the outside world, and neither did anyone else.

All afternoon, I watched as families wandered into the park across the street from our building, spending time together because there was nothing else they could do. They read books, talked, and played with their dogs. In the city centers around Spain, I heard that people gathered in the plazas to play games, chat, drink, and enjoy each other’s company.

In the U.S., when we experienced a blackout, we would stay in our house until the power was restored. We didn’t commune with our neighbors. We waited, but we didn't enjoy the wait.

Spain does community really, really well. Spaniards love to gather, commune, and fiesta. There is no looting, danger, or whining. Instead, they focus on what they control, and what they can control is how they respond to a crappy situation. It’s a breath of fresh air, and perhaps we can all learn something from this willingness to go with the flow despite the inconvenience.

Our power was restored just after 8:00 P.M. on Monday. Cellular service returned sometime around 5:30 P.M., but our WiFi? That didn’t return to normal until Tuesday morning. We may never know the cause of this giant electrical outage. I know one thing for sure, though.

I aspire to be more Spanish in how I respond to life’s curveballs.