A multinational blackout while guiding a tour group? Not an experience I want to repeat, but it’s funny how Rafa & I had such intertwined experiences while in completely different places. Here’s our story:
Backdrop
On Saturday —two days before the apagón— Rafa & I planned to have a mini-date on the high-speed train. He had to work in Sevilla that morning, & Tara from the Rick Steves’ office was in town. We had to get together even though I brought my suitcase to begin an Andalucía tour the following day. Tara & I laughed a lot as always, time flew by & Rafa met us at the train station. My 40-min trip was just enough to share a glass of wine with Rafa in the cafeteria car! I hopped off in Córdoba, & Rafa continued on to spend a few days sightseeing in Madrid. The world was good.
I looked forward to this tour because my previous one had been during Holy Week, which involves a logistical nightmare that few people comprehend. Finally, a tour with only a few changes but surely better weather & a dose of normality. Right.
The following day, I checked out my favorite venue for snails in Córdoba to see if it still merited going with the group. Yep, as good as ever. While wandering back to the hotel to start work, I came across the Cata de Vinos Montilla-Moriles! I’m certified in that wonderful wine, so I thought I might know a few people presenting… of course. What a fun event… and by coincidence, I ran into a couple of my upcoming tour members there.
Snail snack-tivity
If the season is right, I take whoever is interested to an impromptu snail tasting. So typical of Córdoba & a fun way for adventurous tour members to bond, we left the hotel at 12:30 the next day to wander across the river. Most of the group joined, & it’s always fun to see the local reaction when I start taking drink orders & serving snails 😉 Two foreshadowing moments that are crystal clear in hindsight: a major street light was out that had worked the day before, & the oven at the snail pop-up wasn’t working to bake bread. Hmmm…
We all snacked & chatted for a bit, then people went on their way to continue the day. As I wandered to the hotel, I noticed more street lights out as well as stores around the Mezquita-Catedral without electricity. These things happen, so I googled “corte de luz Córdoba” but had no cell phone coverage. Odd.
Back at the hotel, the owner & staff were gathered around the reception desk. Word had spread that the blackout was in several countries in Europe, but nothing could be confirmed. It was already around 14:00, & we hadn’t noticed the power outage at 12:30 because the snail place runs everything off butane tanks & their own generators!
Getting informed
Vodafone continued with little to no service, but for brief moments I’d get a notification from WhatsApp. Messages sent from Rafa pinged in occasionally as he told his experience on Gran Vía in Madrid. By some miracle, Emma at the main office got through to me at 14:32, so I asked what was happening. If anyone knew, the scoop should be more reliable from an outside source. She confirmed that the blackout affected all of Spain, all of Portugal & a part of southwestern France. Cause unknown, speculation of a fire, but more importantly: Spain estimated 6 to 10 hours before power could be restored. Yikes. Cristina from Portugal also sent me the following message soon after, with doubts of its veracity:
I kept the group informed the only way I knew how, with continual notes posted at reception:
I went on a scavenger hunt to find supplies for a possible group picnic that evening, but none were to be found. Córdoba had completely shut down. Only a mini-market run by a Chinese couple, two fruit/veg shops & 1 restaurant were working… and even those would eventually close. Some restaurants & bars were serving wine, cold cuts, cheese, salads, anything that needed no prep but manpower. Since you can’t beat a dead horse, I had a glass of wine with some tour members & resolved myself to a dinner of Tex-Mex Doritos. As I told people the next day, it wasn’t my worst Monday!
Power on
I took a sunset walk to enjoy Córdoba without electricity —no photos to save battery— then managed to fall asleep around 22:30. I thought of contingency plan A, B, C, D & E to give myself some peace of mind & wait for the night to unfold. Around 00:30, I heard a little noise & noticed that electricity had returned. I went back to sleep, but around 02:30 I saw that the hotel internet service was back in action. I checked messages & let the office know about our experience. Still without Vodafone, I wanted to reconfirm the day’s activities before heading out… which proved to be problematic.
At 07:00 I was up & at ’em, trying to contact folks in Montilla or Úbeda. Cell phone service was still out for me, but I thought that I could reach someone by email. Nopity nope. At least office contacts were awake & available for consult. The group was scheduled to leave at 09:30, but honestly with no contact from Montilla or Úbeda, it appeared that electricity had yet to return there.
Now came the fun part of my job: weighing all options. The group’s safety is always my primary concern, & I wasn’t about to take them to a place with no electricity when it was already restored in Córdoba. Sure, the wine tasting could be done without electricity but were they there waiting on us? No way to tell. Could Raúl in Montilla put together a lunch for us or was food spoiled or did they have another option? No way to tell. Would the hotel in Úbeda have rooms ready? No way to tell. If there was an emergency while we were on the road, could we get assistance? No way to tell.
The best option was to stay put in Córdoba. Food was available, museums would open, but we had to find 17 rooms for one night! The group was mostly down at breakfast by 08:20, so I let them know what was happening as it unfolded. The office tasked me to go to two other hotels we work with to ask for rooms, & thankfully because they know me, they blocked off 8 & 6 right away… 14 down, 3 to go! Fortunately via booking.com we found all rooms in the same hotel just around the corner from where we were. Definitely the best choice.
But my job wasn’t done, not by a long shot. I went to the new hotel who had no idea about Rick Steves groups but were wonderful with providing information & assistance, I made some new friends there & continued to try to contact Úbeda to have them save rooms & reschedule all other things for the next day. What a mess. I even tried to do the wine tasting in the new hotel, but they had no space available for us to use. I was finally able to hobble together a “Frankenstein schedule” for the next day’s activities without including Montilla:
In the meantime…
Rafa was on Gran Vía in Madrid when the power went out. Stores began to close, & he thought he should walk to Atocha since the Metro had already shut down. On arrival, police were evacuating the building & sending people to wait in Retiro Park or at the Royal Observatory nearby. Around 18:30 he’d heard Atocha might be open, so he went back but of course nada. Security guards advised him to look for accommodation because no one expected electricity to return any time soon.
Rafa went to several hostals in & around the city center, but everyone was fully booked. At that point, he thought about trying Rick Steves hotels because he’d been to several with me & the staff know us. Hotel Europa turned him away but he went to the Hotel Moderno where the owner, Santiago, agreed he could sleep on a couch in the first-floor waiting area. Better than nothing!
In the meantime as a way to say thanks, Rafa offered to help Santiago with whatever he could. He walked around scoping out the situation & reported back… power slowly returned to Madrid around 21:00, but the Moderno was on a block without power for a long time after much of the city had their service restored. That was also part of my decision earlier to keep the group in Córdoba: just because power had been restored in general did not mean that every block or everything functioned as normal.
Santiago had no idea what to do with the rooms for Javier’s group scheduled to arrive that day because no one at RSE could contact him. Also, everyone stranded in Madrid was looking for a room. Rafa talked with Amanda (who had cell service back), & she put the office in contact with him. All this time for some unknown reason, Rafa had maintained cell phone coverage throughout most of the blackout. Because of this & with Rafa at the front desk to help Santiago, Tour Ops finally confirmed to hold on to the rooms for the SPA group coming… by bus! Rafa let Santiago use his phone & was in the right place at the right time, but he was also willing to help because of his relationship with RSE through me.
The Rick Steves group arrived sometime after 02:00, & Rafa managed to get a room when someone holding a reservation finally cancelled. In both our situations, everything worked out because we had good contacts, good relations & good support… pillars of being a good guide. But what a wild ride!
Cause & effect
Almost two months after the event, no concrete cause for the blackout has been identified. Naturally many fingers were pointed, but most people in Spain already seem to have forgotten about the apagón. An official report is yet to be published, and conspiracy theories aside, the blackout resulted from “a perfect storm of poor grid management and inadequate connections of solar facilities to the grid, as well as other unknown faults” according to J. Guillermo Sánchez León at the Instituto Universitario de Física Fundamental y Matemáticas (Universidad de Salamanca). We’ll leave it at that for now.
Instead of returning home, Rafa went directly to Granada as soon as he could get a bus ticket. We’d planned to celebrate his birthday there during the Cruces de Mayo festival. In Granada, my Rick Steves group & Javier’s magically coincided at the same restaurant, so I got to say hi to many of them. Most of my people handled the rescheduling well, although in the end we couldn’t find a venue (or even ship the wine in such a short time) to do the Montilla-Moriles tasting.
When I returned to Córdoba in June, I had a little bit of PTSD, reliving those crazy moments of trying to find info, hotel rooms & food. I’d heard that many businesses in Granada had remained open during the blackout, while Montilla & Úbeda were some of the last in Spain to have power restored! That was a good call, for sure. Someone later said that at least I have another crazy story to tell… even if I don’t need any more 😉