Electricity was back in most of the two countries almost 18 hours after a blackout that shut down much of daily life. The cause of the outage remained unclear.

Spain and Portugal held emergency Cabinet meetings as evacuations from some public spaces took place. Spain's Interior Ministry has declared a state of emergency for affected regions that need it. Follow DW.

No electricity, no communication, and in some cases, no running water – that was the situation from around 11:30am yesterday in Portugal and Spain, following a widespread blackout. Many people were unable to work,