Inside the big blackout that has plunged the EPP congress into chaos.
VALENCIA – On Monday afternoon, Valencia resembled a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Tram cars stood abandoned half-way between stops, where they had suddenly ground to a halt. At the city’s famous Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències complex, swathes of people strolled through shopping centres whose shops had mostly been boarded-up.
Some had come to use Wi-Fi hotspots and charge their mobile devices in public plugs. Others had coffee at a dark Starbucks. The district’s futuristic steel-and-glass architecture added to the ghostliness.
It was not quite an apocalypse that struck the Iberian peninsula on Monday midday when power cut out across most of Spain and Portugal for reasons which are not yet fully understood. But the blackout has brought Valencia to its knees, just as some of Europe’s most powerful leaders are descending on the city for the congress of Europe’s centre-right family, the European People’s Party (EPP).
Some attendants, including this correspondent, had been in mid-air, en route to the summit, when the outage occurred. But the unfolding situation quickly revealed itself upon touchdown for those who were lucky enough to access the failing mobile data network.
At the airport, long queues formed in front of taxi stands, leaving MPs in line next to families on holiday, all stranded due to the collapse of the city’s electricity-powered public transport system.
It marks an embarrassment for the Spanish hosts, the conservative Partído Popular (PP), who had planned to make the congress a testament to their growing strength since winning control of Valencia from the Socialists in 2023.
Yet the choice of location on Spain’s east coast was doomed from the start.
Difficult transportation links had forced most of the EU bubble to take a plane late on Monday night from Charleroi, some 60 kilometres south of Brussels.
More importantly, the Valencia region was among the hardest hit by floods last autumn that cost 230 lives. Ever since, there had been a simmering debate about a location change to dodge protests against the regional PP government’s failure to prevent the catastrophe.
Back to the dark ages
Now the hosts are facing a state of emergency on the eve of the two-day congress.
They remain dependent on authorities restoring sufficient normality by Tuesday to go ahead as planned after the outage seemingly catapulted the city back to the dark ages. As the internet widely failed, residents depended on calls and battery-powered radios to communicate with the outside world.
Other parts of the city were working seemingly at random. At this correspondent’s hotel by the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, there was neither running water nor working lifts, though the air conditioning remained functional. Generators kept nearby shop signs illuminated, but most shops were unable to take card payments.
The situation also raises questions about Europe’s wider resilience in case of disruption, a growing concern for Brussels and national governments following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
In Valencia, basic functionalities started flickering back to life over the course of Monday evening. Yet many things remained up in the air as this article went to pixel, including the functionality of public transport and the effect on the congress itself.
The EPP has so far not released official information on the matter – if perhaps only for a lack of internet access.
(vc, vp)
Source: euractiv.com
