Tag: spain

Is The New York Times Serious With This Headline About the Spanish Blackout?

Spain made a huge announcement this year: it is now 100 percent powered by renewable energy. Green warriors unite! The planet is saved. Global warming is over, except that it’s not. And like Solyndra, this entire method of powering a nation was exposed as a fraud and a scam. There was an 18-hour blackout because the grid couldn’t handle it. The best part is that The New York Times had this headline for the fiasco: “How Spain’s Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable.”

Fact check: If the grid goes down, or is “vulnerable,” then the renewable energy push was not a success: 

Spain’s power company, Red Eléctrica, proudly declared on April 16 that enough renewable energy had been generated to cover demand. “The ecological transition is moving forward,” it said. 

Less than two weeks later, Spain and Portugal experienced an 18-hour blackout that disrupted daily life, shutting down businesses and schools and crippling trains and mobile networks. 

Officials have given few details on the cause of the outage. But the incident exposed how Spain and Portugal, promoted as success stories in Europe’s renewable energy transition, are also uniquely vulnerable to outages, given their relative isolation from the rest of the continent’s energy supply.

“This disruption serves as a clear warning,” wrote Pratheeksha Ramdas, an analyst at Rystad Energy, a consulting firm. “Future grid failures could have even more severe consequences,” she added. 

The widespread outage raises questions about the resilience of the power infrastructure in Spain and Portugal — and to an extent, Europe. The two countries have invested heavily in building renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar farms. 

More than half of Spain’s electricity came from renewable energy as of last year, up from about a quarter 15 years ago. That rapid increase has put Spain at the forefront of Europe’s transition to renewable energy and led to much lower electricity prices and less reliance on fossil fuels. 

This shift, though, may also have made the grid more prone to the sort of disruption that occurred on Monday. “When you have more renewables on the grid,” Ms. Ramdas said, “then your grid is more sensitive for these kind of disturbances.” 

Keep reading

NatGas Generators Rescued Spain From Net Zero Death After Power Collapse

We want to congratulate Portugal and Spain for achieving net zero earlier this week, well ahead of the 2050 target.

Europe’s dangerous and radical shift to unreliable net zero energy has been nothing short of a disaster and an embarrassment for the far-left liberals high in their castles in Brussels. 

The progressives ramming green ideology down our throats seem completely divorced from reality, having steered the West toward a bleak future built on unreliable green energy—much of it sourced from China.

Meanwhile, China is rapidly expanding its reliable coal and nuclear power generation. One can’t help but wonder whether leftist politicians are inadvertently sabotaging the very foundations of the West. 

The inconvenient truth for Western liberals is that fossil fuel power generation is what restarted Spain’s power grid after the worst power blackout in a generation. 

“SPAIN’s black start after the cascading power failure relied heavily on gas-fired and hydro generators to re-energise the grid and establish synchronism,” commodities analyst John Kemp wrote on X. 

Keep reading

Power Restored In Spain, Portugal As Net-Zero Becomes Headache For Brussels

Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica announced on X early Tuesday that 99% of the country’s power capacity had been restored following a daylong, unprecedented blackout that plunged much of Europe’s Iberian Peninsula into chaos and darkness.

As of 0700 local time, Red Eléctrica stated:

  • 99.95% of the demand recovered (25,794MW).
  • We continue working from the Electrical Control Center for the complete normalization of the system.

The outage paralyzed digital payment systems, disrupted communications, and brought various modes of transportation networks to an apocalyptic standstill. While a Spanish judge has launched an investigation into whether a cyberattack was responsible, early indications suggest the culprit is likely net zero.

Here’s an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger at PUBLIC, who provided an uncomfortable truth about the unhinged liberals in Europe who have been hellbent on retiring fossil fuel power and nuclear generation plants, swapping for unreliable solar and wind:

Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024. 

Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired. 

On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.

The system was being pushed to the limit.

And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.

…

Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.

Keep reading

Spain’s blackouts are a disaster made by Net Zero

‘We face a long night’, warned Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez yesterday evening, after much of Spain, Portugal and south-west France were plunged into darkness by the worst power outage in European history. Tens of millions of people were left without electricity. Trains were halted, planes were grounded and the internet was shut down. Modern life ground to a halt across the Iberian Peninsula. Although the exact causes of the blackout have yet to be declared, we can be certain of one thing: the risk of such outages will only get worse as we embark on the path towards Net Zero.

Spain and Portugal are increasingly reliant on solar and wind power. Renewables were supplying 80 per cent of electricity just before the outages. The blackouts were triggered by a rapid loss of power – of around 15GW, the equivalent of 60 per cent of Spain’s national electricity demand. It is not clear what exactly led to this loss, although a cyber attack has been ruled out. What matters is that a renewable-heavy grid is far less able to absorb this kind of shock than one that runs on traditional energy sources.

Coal and gas plants, or hydroelectric dams, have what is called ‘inertia’ built into the system, whereas wind and solar do not. The spinning turbines used in traditional energy generation will not immediately grind to a halt when there is a fault, acting as a buffer against power outages. ‘In a low-inertia environment’, explains energy expert Kathryn Porter, ‘if you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react. That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.’

Keep reading

Could renewable energy be to blame for huge Spain blackout? How outage struck days after country’s grid ran entirely on green power for the first time

Widespread power outages hit several countries in Western Europe this afternoon, triggering chaos as rail networks, traffic lights and communications networks went down. 

The shocking blackouts, which struck around 12.15pm CEST have impacted millions of people with almost all of Spain and Portugal affected. 

Parts of France, Andorra and Belgium also suffered outages, according to the most recent reports. 

Several metro and rail passengers were reportedly stranded in Madrid and Lisbon, while the international airports of both capital cities and several other airports across Spain and Portugal were closed.

Spain’s state electricity network operator Red Electrica said on X it had begun to restore power in the north and south of Spain, adding it may take some time to bring the whole grid back online.

Some critics have claimed that Spain’s integration of renewable energy sources into the European power network could have triggered the blackout, though the cause has not yet been established. 

Renewable energy sources – wind, hydro and solar power – met the electricity demand for all of Spain for the first time ever on April 16, according to Red Electrica, which says it is leading an ‘ecological transition’ in Spain’s energy sector.

Other theories include a cyber attack, as analysts pointed out that Europe’s energy grid has suffered a substantial increase in cyber attacks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Meanwhile, a fire in southern France is reported to have damaged a high-voltage powerline between Perpignan and Narbonne, which may also have contributed to the outages, according to Portugal’s national electric company REN.

Red Electrica is now working with two of Spain’s largest electric companies, Endesa and Iberdrola, to investigate the cause of the outages. 

Keep reading

Muslims Threaten to Sue Spain in Strasbourg Over Holy Week Processions, Claim They “Offend Islam.”

A group of British Muslims of Iranian origin, led by Anjem Choudary, is threatening to file a lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

They allege that Spain’s traditional Holy Week processions are an “offense to Islam” and to the Prophet Muhammad, demanding their immediate ban.

The Muslim group intends to sue Spain in Strasbourg over these Catholic processions, with Choudary arguing that these religious events, rooted in Catholic tradition since 1978, are a “provocation” against Muslims.

“It’s an offense to the thousands of Muslims forced to live in secrecy ,” declared the leader, known for his history of radical statements. The legal challenge seeks to have Spain suspend these centuries-old celebrations, triggering a strong backlash throughout the country.

Keep reading

The Socialist Autocrat of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, Targets Foreign Property Buyers with a 100% Tax While Daring to Criticize Trump’s Tariffs.

Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez — the most corrupt and autocratic socialist in recent history leading a far-left coalition — has announced a stunning policy: a 
100% tax on real estate purchases by non-EU foreigners.

Recently unveiled, this measure threatens to destabilize Spain’s housing market, scare off investors, and allegedly prioritize housing for locals — all at the expense of economic growth. Yet Sánchez dares to call President Donald Trump’s tariffs “unfair,” revealing a level of hypocrisy that no longer surprises anyone.

Comrade Sánchez presents this tax as a solution to Spain’s housing crisis. He cites data showing that in 2023, non-EU buyers — Americans, Brits, and others — purchased 27,000 properties, often as investments rather than primary residences.

Keep reading

Spain’s Vox Party Spokesperson Faces Hate-Crime Probe After Calling Out Link Between Immigration & Crime

A Spanish conservative lawmaker is facing a hate crime investigation after a press conference in which he highlighted the link between mass immigration and rising crime rates — a connection supported by official data but often ignored by Spain’s far-left administration.

José Antonio Fúster, national spokesman for the populist Vox party and member of the Madrid Assembly, addressed the media on July 29 last year, where he read out the forenames of several dozen individuals arrested during violent incidents in Barcelona that weekend.

“Sabar, Omar, Nassim, Abdelkader, Salah, Salah, Younes, Karim, Jamil, Amir, Ali, Oussama, Hassan… I can go on. Do you notice any patterns? Do you notice anything?” Fúster asked.

“We do, and this is what we have been denouncing for a long time, that the open-door policy of the Popular Party and the PSOE has direct consequences on the security of Spaniards,” he added.

Though the list he read had the surnames redacted and had already circulated online via party channels, his public use of it has led the National Police to file a report for alleged incitement to hatred. Fúster, protected by parliamentary immunity as a sitting deputy, expressed disbelief upon receiving the notification last week and doubled down on his comments.

“We’re constantly told that immigration and crime have no link,” Fúster said, as cited by Spanish digital newspaper The Objective. 

“But they’re not fooling anyone. The criminals that Spaniards endure in their neighborhoods have names — and we all know them.”

Vox maintains that spurious criminal complaints are part of a wider effort to silence those who raise valid security concerns. The party highlighted charges against MP Rocío de Meer last year for writing, “The future of this country is dark,” in response to the birth of a child named Ayoub in a rural Spanish village, and Jordi de la Fuente, another Vox figure, who is awaiting trial over a 2019 protest targeting an asylum center.

Keep reading

Spain cancels arms deal with Israeli company worth billions

The Spanish government has canceled a contract to buy ammunition for its Civil Guard police force from an Israeli defense company, Madrid announced in a statement on 29 October.

“The Spanish government maintains the commitment not to sell weapons to the Israeli state since the armed conflict broke out in the territory of Gaza,” Spain’s Interior Ministry announced. 

“Although in this case it is an acquisition of ammunition, the Interior Ministry has initiated the administrative procedure to cancel the purchase,” it added. 

It also said Israeli firms will be excluded from any outstanding tenders. 

The Cadena SER radio station reported earlier that Spain’s Civil Guard police force had agreed to a sale of over 15 million nine-millimeter rounds for $6.48 million from Guardian LTD Israel. 

The announcement comes the week after the Spanish Defense Ministry told local media that it had halted the purchase of weapons from Israel. The European country had said it would stop arms sales to Israel after the start of the war on 7 October 2023.

This decision marks the first signal that the Spanish pledge will include purchases from Israel and not just sales.

Spain has been vocal about Israel’s genocide and continuous war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as in Lebanon. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged other members of the EU on 14 October to suspend the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel. 

Keep reading

“A Salary For Being Trans” : Trans Activists In Spain Prompt Outrage After Meeting With Politicians To Forward A “Transgender Pension”

A prominent trans activist organization in Spain has put forward a proposal for legislation that would guarantee transgender people pensions upon reaching 65. The pensions would be issued regardless of whether the transgender applicant had ever paid into the pension throughout their life.

The proposal was put forward by Federation Platform for Trans Rights, who presented it last week to the parliamentary groups of the Congress of Deputies. The group, known colloquially as Plataforma Trans, was founded in 2015 “with the aim of uniting specifically trans collectives and entities and to fight for a new trans law that recognizes gender self-determination and depathologises trans identities.” During the meeting, all parties sent representatives except the right-wing Popular Party and Vox Party.

Calling it the “Trans Memory Law,” the policy would grant people who identify as transgender a lifetime pension, along with priority access to public housing and housing assistance programs.

This was the second meeting involving the Federation Platform for Trans Rights and top Spanish politicians, indicating the group may soon see their plans realized.

Keep reading