Act Two: Sometimes It's Always Darkest In The Middle Of The Afternoon

Walking the narrow winding streets after visiting the patios, we realized that the cheering from the bar was just a mirage about the power being back on.  Stores were dark, some were closed.

Then the question became, “could we get into our apartment” – was the electronic lock powered by battery or by electricity.  

We knew it was a problem immediately when I pushed the first of five numbers and the keypad responded as though it were dead.  It responded that way because it was. . .dead.

Fortunately, someone from another apartment was coming out, so we charged in as they opened the door from the inside.

So then the question was, is our apartment door keypad battery or electric? Push the first button of the five digit code, and nothing happens.

Yikes, we were locked out.  The building had a double lobby – one up front and one after that, close to our ground floor apartment.  The inner lobby had two chairs.

We plopped down on those, hoping for a quick return of power.  We tried to contact the landlord with little internet we had, but the landlord did not respond to our emails over the ensuing hours.

VRBO doesn’t want you communicating directly with landlords via WhatsApp, text, or phone, so we did not have a phone number to reach out to an emergency.

I mostly slept – staying awake and contemplating a situation where it takes days for the power grid to be fixed was too horrible.  

By then we had heard that only the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) were out.  It was believed that the southern part of France (the Pyrenees mostly) had power restored already.

This holds the record for the largest power outage in history.  While on one hand I’m proud to be one of millions to be a world record holder, on the other hand I would have been content to pass on the honor.

It turns out it is NOT even close to the largest in terms of people impacted.  With 55 million losing power, it ranks 14th.  Most of the higher-ranked blackouts took place in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh.  Even the Northeast blackout of 2003, which happened in Canada and the US, impacted slightly more people.

So we sat there in our chairs, miserably worried about how long we would be locked out of our apartment, our shower, our clean clothes, our luggage, our phone charger cords.  Since I use the Apple maps GPS to get around, my battery was wearing down quickly.

Carol went out to get some provisions from a fruit stand and a mini market.  So to face the great Iberian Blackout of 2025, we had two bananas, two apples, two sleeves of Oreos, and one large water bottle. 

Meanwhile, I did the best I could, primarily by sleeping.  Spainards living in the building (there were maybe six apartments) walked past us and offered a cheerful “Hola!” although the time wondering who these homeless people are.

The situation looked bleaked for the good guys, primarily because it was bleak.