What Happens When an Entire Country Loses Power?

Ep10.

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[00:00:06.05] - Oliver (Host)

Have you ever thought about how fragile modern life really is? How quickly everything could just stop? Not just the lights, but the phones, the Internet, even your work? Well, I didn't really think about it either until it happened this week.

[00:00:25.46] - Oliver (Host)

One minute I was at the gym, the next minute it felt like the beginning of a survival film. No electricity, no mobile phone, no idea what was going on and no way of knowing how long it would last. Today we're going to talk about the day that Spain and Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, just shut down and what it teaches us about technology, community and, well, just trying to stay sane when nothing works at all. Hello and welcome back to English and Beyond Intermediate English podcast. Remember that if you want some extra help with the difficult vocabulary, the transcript and flashcards are available for free at www.morethanalanguage.com.

[00:01:22.07] - Oliver (Host)

i'm Oliver and today's episode is slightly later than planned. Hopefully you can forgive me for that. I was supposed to upload an episode yesterday, but just in case you didn't hear, Spain, where I live, and Portugal had a huge blackout. No electricity, no Internet, no phones, nothing. So today I thought I would tell you just a little bit about what happened, what it felt like and what it made me realise, all in intermediate level English, of course.

[00:02:00.22] - Oliver (Host)

My day and the blackout itself started fairly normally. I was at the gym, almost at the end of a punishing leg session when the lights suddenly went out. At first, everyone just sort of laughed. There was still a bit of emergency lighting and the staff told us to carry on, but that we should be careful.

[00:02:24.03] - Oliver (Host)

It didn't seem like that big a deal, just a local outage. Maybe someone had pulled the wrong wire. But after about 10 minutes, they told us that the whole block had lost power. Still, no one seemed very concerned. It wasn't until I walked outside and checked my phone that I realised something more serious was going on.

[00:02:47.26] - Oliver (Host)

I had no signal, no Internet and no mobile data. My phone was basically just a glorified torch at that point. I asked a woman on the street if she knew anything and she said someone had told her the whole country was was down. Spain, Portugal, no power anywhere at all. I headed home.

[00:03:09.34] - Oliver (Host)

Luckily there was still water, so I grabbed a quick shower and tried to think about what to do next. But the truth was I found that there really wasn't much to do at all. My work, my job, entertainment, even music needed electricity and the Internet. My laptop had some battery left, but I stream everything anyway. So no Internet and no data meant no Spotify, no Netflix, no YouTube.

[00:03:41.40] - Oliver (Host)

I hadn't saved anything locally - that is on my laptop - and this turned out to be a very clear mistake. So I picked up an old fashioned paper book and I went for a walk around my neighbourhood, thinking that in the worst case scenario, I would just read something in the sun. Normally, if I wanted to meet friends, I'd send a text or I'd call them, but without that, I was left wandering around, looking up at the windows of their flats, trying to guess if anyone was home. I even tried shouting a couple of names up at balconies, which is very 19th century behaviour.

[00:04:25.34] - Oliver (Host)

So none of my friends seem to be home. But one advantage of Valencia is that the centre of the city, the central neighbourhoods, are tiny. And within about 15 minutes of wandering around, I actually found a few friends sitting in a plaza drinking beers. It seemed that everyone had decided to do the same thing. If nothing works, just go outside and find other people. The terraces were packed and everyone was paying with loose coins because of course, card payments weren't working.

[00:05:00.42] - Oliver (Host)

We had maybe €7 between five of us. Obviously not ideal. But the weirdest part wasn't the darkness or the money. It was the fact that we had no information. No radio, no news updates, no way to check if it was just Spain or the whole world.

[00:05:20.14] - Oliver (Host)

It's funny, we all live with constant access to information, but take it away and you realise how quickly you start to feel cut off. You find yourself thinking, wow, what if something really big has happened? Would we even know? How could we even know? So since there wasn't much else to do and no way of knowing if or when things would get better, we went to the beach.

[00:05:50.43] - Oliver (Host)

It felt a bit strange at first, but really, what else could we do? Sit at home and stare at blank computer screens until the Internet came back on? At least on the beach there was sun, there were people, and there was a feeling that life was just carrying on as normal.

[00:06:10.25] - Oliver (Host)

This experience made me realise a few things. First, just how completely dependent we are on electricity and the Internet. Not just for work, but for basic things: communication, money, even entertainment. Without them, you're not just inconvenienced, you're basically helpless. Second, how quickly everything falls apart when those systems go. I couldn't work, I couldn't pay for anything, I couldn't withdraw money, I couldn't even properly meet up with friends without physically wandering around and looking for them. And it wasn't some peaceful digital detox either.

[00:06:54.31] - Oliver (Host)

It was a stark reminder, a strong reminder that many of us nowadays, myself included, have no real survival skills. We rely completely on systems we barely even think about until they stop working, of course. And it made me think about what would happen if we had a bigger emergency. It was shocking enough that there was no electricity or mobile coverage in most of the country after 10 hours or so. But what if it had been days and I was lucky enough to just have been in the gym when the power suddenly went out?

[00:07:33.29] - Oliver (Host)

Imagine the poor people stuck in lifts and underground metros. No power, no mobile service, no way of calling for help. That's not some dramatic movie scene, it's a genuine risk in cities full of high rise buildings, and I realised I'm not prepared for any of it. The truth is, the world we live in is a lot more fragile than we like to admit, and when it does break, you realise how little you can actually do about it. So it's been a bit of a strange start to the week, but also a useful reminder that it's good to be flexible, adaptable and maybe to keep a bit of cash and a few offline songs stored for the best case scenario.

[00:08:25.47] - Oliver (Host)

Thank you for listening. Please like and follow the podcast if you want to carry on learning English with me. Thank you, goodbye and see you next time.