Spain-Portugal blackouts: Customers clear supermarket shelves as they panic buy essential supplies

Blackouts in and impacting more than 50 million people have extended into the evening, with huge queues forming outside across Europe as panic ensues. People across the neighbouring nations have resorted to panic buying during massive outages that have knocked out power to residences, businesses, telecommunications and critical infrastructure, with no end yet in sight hours after they began.

While authorities estimate power could return in a matter of hours, massive queues forming outside supermarkets show the reigning concern amongst the general public, with people posting on social media that the scenes remind them of the early stages of the pandemic.

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Pictures from both nations show people queuing inside and carting huge bottles of water while wearing faces of grave concern, with one Brit holidaymaker staying in major Spanish city Madrid categorising the situation as "carnage" as people started to panic. They told the Daily Mail: "People are starting to panic. It's going to get really bad if they don't restore power quickly."

Other observers taking to social media have accused panic buyers of being "stupid", with one user posting on X, formerly , saying the buying started just three hours after power went out in Portugal.

He wrote: "People are total idiots. Power and internet goes for three hours so far here in Portugal and supermarkets empty with huge queues." Some were more understanding, however, suggesting people were right to scavenge as long as there remained uncertainty as to when the situation might be rectified by officials.

They said: "Most water and canned food is already sold out in our Portugal supermarket. Portuguese are fast to scavenge as they should be if power doesn't come back soon."

In the same post, the local said the situation felt "very COVID 2020", and commended Portuguese supermarket operators for getting generators up and running so people could continue to buy critical supplies.

They said: "It all feels very COVID 2020 to everyone here. The fact supermarkets are still up with generators is great work by the Portuguese."

There is still no word as to when the outages might finish, with estimations ranging from a few hours - per Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro - to up to one week, according to national grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), which state sthe network remains fragile.

REN has claimed the outage was the product of an "atmospheric phenomenon" on the Spanish side, with massive temperature fluctuations knocking out the grid.

While Spain is yet to comment on the claims, REN has said the phenomenon is known as "induced atmospheric variation", and caused synchronisation failures between systems in Spain that eventually bled into Portugal.