It was just weeks ago that a huge blackout left Spain and Portugal in the dark. Today, the nation is facing yet another severe infrastructure breakdown — a nationwide telephone network outage that has suspended essential services and sparked public concerns. Telefonica, Spain's telephone giant, confirmed that network upgrades over the past few days have led to a general collapse in voice services, especially landline phones, nationwide. The service went out early Monday morning and had a significant impact on emergency communication in many areas.

Areas such as Aragón, Extremadura, the Basque Country, and the Valencian Community were among the most affected. Emergency 112 numbers went offline in some instances, so regional authorities had to release alternative numbers to contact basic services. One spokesperson for Telefónica said to the local media, "We have done some upgrades to the network that have impacted certain services at certain companies. We are working on fixing this." By late morning, services were restored partially in Valencia, Aragon, La Rioja, and Andalusia, although users still experienced periodic glitches. Local media reported that while mobile networks were less impacted, landlines and VoIP systems were mostly disrupted.

As per the real-time outage monitoring website Downdetector, the problems started at around 2:00 a.m., when thousands of customers in Spain were affected. The collapse had:

• 72 per cent reporting complete outage
• 18 per cent facing no signal
• 10 per cent experiencing a total shutdown of voice services

Spain's Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service confirmed it is "monitoring the situation, requesting specific information and timescales for a solution" from Telefonica. In Basque, authorities said the outage is intermittent and random, making it difficult to manage and predict, rendering it hard to control and anticipate. The Emergency Management Centre has been unable to ensure continuity of service.

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The telephone blackout follows an unprecedented April blackout that cut electricity to millions of people across Spain and Portugal for almost 23 hours. The collapse of the power grid hit electricity, metros, and airport networks, and the public communication system over the Iberian Peninsula.

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