The Investigation Commission created in the Senate, to study the reasons for the blackout of last year in the month of April, considers REE and Redeia responsible for the blackout, the Government of Spain through MITECO and, appreciates a relevant institutional responsibility of the CNMC for its regulatory and supervisory inaction.
Responsible sources from the Commission convey to Demócrata that the blackout of April 28 was not an unforeseeable accident, but the outcome of a structural fragility known in advance. In the Commission's opinion, the system reached that date with insufficient margins, with a voltage instability already reiterated in previous weeks and months, and without the institutions called to prevent, supervise, and correct the risk acting with the required diligence.
This Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Popular Party, Alicia García, has announced the results of a report whose most relevant conclusions are:
1) The Commission rules out that the collapse responded to an inevitable phenomenon. The tension problems and the lack of resources to absorb them were identified in advance.
2) The Commission links the collapse to a persistent combination of high photovoltaic penetration, low inertia, voltage oscillations, variations in international exchanges, and insufficient response.
3) The Commission notes a concatenated failure of operation, supervision, and political oversight. It does not place the problem in an isolated anomaly, but in the complete chain of public and corporate decision-making.
4) The Commission understands that, after the blackout, an insufficient, biased or late institutional communication was maintained, and that this aggravated the lack of protection of citizens and businesses.
5) The Commission demands a comprehensive correction: operational reinforcement, regulatory update, review of energy policy, accountability, and effective protection of consumers and industry
Accredited facts that explain the collapse Factual framework
The work of the Commission -our consulted sources indicate- has been able to reconstruct the episode from audios, transcriptions, operational emails, technical documentation, and appearances.
The common thread -they indicate- is clear: April 28 does not inaugurate the problem, but culminates it. Documented antecedents are confirmed as early as January 31, 2025, when REE operators acknowledge a lack of resources to control tensions and attribute part of the problem to sudden entries of solar generation. The episodes of April 7 are especially highlighted, in which the network itself comes to be described as “uncontrollable”, with continuous oscillations and the absence of sufficient groups with inertia to stabilize the system.
At this point, the Commission considers very relevant the episode of April 16, in which instability is explicitly related to the scarce nuclear or conventional generation available. The incidents of April 22, 24, and 26 are also accredited, as well as the calls in the early morning and morning of April 28 itself, as manifestations of the same underlying pathology.
The Commission also highlights a trend data point that reinforces the predictability thesis: the sharp increase in overvoltage episodes in previous years and the internal recognition that tools were lacking to address them.
Escalation of April 28
The sequence of the blackout morning reflects, in the Commission's opinion, a progressive worsening known in real time by the operators: alerts from early morning, increasing oscillations, express identification of the photovoltaic cause, recognition that the entire system was in trouble, warning about a possible disconnection of Almaraz and, finally, total collapse without real margin for reaction. Operational conclusion of the Commission.
It has been established for the Commission that the systemic conditions that made the energy zero possible were known before the collapse and that no extraordinary measures were adopted with sufficient anticipation.
Institutional valuation
The Commission attributes direct operational responsibility to REE because it was the entity responsible for maintaining the security of the system in real time, having the technical resources, activating the protocols, and reacting to the progressive degradation of the system.
In this regard, The Commission considers that REE knew the risk in advance and that, despite this, it did not promote or deploy a sufficient response in a timely manner at the preventive, operational, and documentary level. The Commission reproaches Redeia for a corporate governance and risk management failure, understanding that the parent company cannot disassociate itself from a structural fragility that affected the core activity of its subsidiary and that was even reflected in the company's risk information.
Likewise, the Commission considers the Government responsible for the blackout due to omission in its duty of guardianship, planning, and and reaction to risk signals that, in its opinion, were persistent and sufficiently known. The Commission places the core of that responsibility on energy policy and ministerial supervision, understanding that it is not enough to set transition or renewable deployment objectives: it was required to align them with operational security, grid strength, synchronous capacity, voltage control, and real system adaptation.
The Commission also appreciates an aggravated political responsibility in the subsequent phase, considering that the public communication did not offer from the beginning a neutral, objective, and fully truthful explanation of what happened. 3.3. Furthermore -adds the report-, the Commission does not treat the CNMC as an external observer but as an integral part of the regulatory framework whose insufficient action is part of the institutional failure of the system.
The Commission understands that the CNMC knew or should have known the structural risks and that it did not exercise with the required diligence its powers of regulatory updating, technical supervision, and corrective impulse. Hence, the Commission also reproaches the CNMC for its subsequent management of the information and public conclusions, considering that the citizenry needed a complete clarification and not a partial or deferred closure of responsibilities.
Transparency and institutional disinformation
Having reached this point, the Commission maintains in its report that the blackout continued in the field of the public narrative through an institutional communication that did not help to quickly clarify the technical origin of the incident and tried to place the responsibilities on third parties.
The Commission considers the persistence of the cyberattack hypothesis particularly serious when, in its opinion, the bodies involved (especially the Government) already had or should have had sufficient elements to rule it out as the real cause of the collapse. Finally, the Commission links the documentary opacity and the withholding of information with an impairment of democratic accountability and with an added difficulty for those affected to exercise their rights of claim.