La Palma Blackout Sparks Debate on Energy Grid

On June 10, La Palma in the Canary Islands suffered a major blackout caused by a turbine failure at the Los Guinchos power station, leaving over 50,000 residents—more than half the island’s population—without electricity. Emergency plans were activated, with firefighters assisting those trapped in elevators and authorities urging calm as restoration efforts continued. This was the second significant outage in just over a month, with a previous blackout on May 8 affecting nearly 20,000 people. Island president Sergio Rodriguez criticized the obsolete power infrastructure and called for urgent intervention from regional and national governments. No injuries were reported during the incidents. The repeated outages have reignited debate about investment in energy infrastructure and have been compared to similar power grid challenges in mainland Spain and Portugal.