“We will have another meeting next week, because it is very important to collect all the information to understand exactly what caused the incident, which, as you know, was on the Spanish network,” said Maria da Graça Carvalho.

The Portuguese minister met this morning, via videoconference, with the Deputy Prime Minister of Spain and Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Sara Aagesen, about the current energy situation in the Iberian Peninsula.

Maria da Graça Carvalho indicated that “it will take some time to understand exactly” the reasons for the blackout, and the two countries “will need a lot of data to understand exactly what happened”.

A widespread power outage affected Portugal and Spain on Monday from 11:30 am.

“At this moment, there is still no idea as to what the cause was, because as I told you, it was a serious, complex incident, which needs to be analyzed very carefully,” said the minister.

According to Maria da Graça Carvalho, Portuguese officials know “what needs to be done”, such as “giving more resilience” to the system.

“And we also know that even with a very resilient system, no one can be 100% protected against an event of this type,” said the minister.

Maria da Graça Carvalho stated that she has been in contact, in addition to her Spanish counterpart, also with the European Commissioner for Energy, Teresa Ribeira.