Red Eléctrica’s Documentary Reveals Truth Behind Spain’s 2025 Blackout Controversy

Spain’s national electricity grid operator, Red Eléctrica, has released a documentary marking the first anniversary of the April 28, 2025, blackout that left the entire country without power, reigniting tensions with major energy companies over responsibility for the outage. In the film, Red Eléctrica’s president, Beatriz Corredor, explicitly accuses an unnamed executive from “one of the largest companies” of identifying one of its power plants as the likely origin of the failure the day after the incident—a claim she says has been corroborated by subsequent investigations but remains publicly unconfirmed.

Accusations Against a Major Energy Company

Corredor’s account, presented in the documentary released on April 27, 2026, centers on a private meeting held on April 29, 2025, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid. According to her testimony, executives from Spain’s leading electricity companies were gathered to brief Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez after the system’s restoration. During the meeting, an unnamed executive from a major firm pointed to one of its own plants as the potential source of the blackout, Corredor said.

“One of the executives from these companies, one of the largest, pointed to a production plant of that company and said it was already being considered as the origin. I asked, ‘Which plant did you say?’ and he gave me the name.”

Beatriz Corredor, President of Red Eléctrica

Corredor did not disclose the name of the company or the plant in the documentary, but she emphasized that the incident was not the result of a failure by Red Eléctrica. Instead, she described it as an “unforeseeable” sequence of events triggered by a generation facility’s anomalous behavior. The documentary suggests that the unnamed company’s plant played a “special role” in the cascade of failures that led to the blackout, a conclusion Corredor claims has been supported by all subsequent reports—though none of these findings have been made public.

Corredor also criticized the company for failing to provide data about the plant’s operations even a year after the incident, framing the delay as an attempt to obscure responsibility. “A year later, this data is still not public and the reality of the facts continues to be questioned,” she said.

Legal and Regulatory Fallout

The documentary does not address an ongoing disciplinary proceeding launched by Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), which has accused Red Eléctrica of a “very serious” regulatory violation related to the blackout. However, the film repeatedly asserts that the grid operator adhered to all operational protocols and that the outage stemmed from external factors beyond its control.

Red Eléctrica has faced legal challenges from Iberdrola, one of Spain’s largest energy companies, which has sued the grid operator for alleged anti-competitive practices and defamation. The lawsuit centers on Red Eléctrica’s public statements linking the blackout to Iberdrola’s Núñez de Balboa photovoltaic plant in Badajoz, a claim Iberdrola has vehemently denied. While Corredor did not name Iberdrola in the documentary, the company’s legal actions and the timing of the accusations have fueled speculation that it is the unnamed firm at the center of her allegations.

Technical Causes and Industry Disputes

The documentary reinforces Red Eléctrica’s long-standing position that the blackout was caused by a combination of factors, including an uncontrolled voltage surge and the failure of multiple generation facilities to comply with grid regulations. Eduardo Prieto, Red Eléctrica’s Director of Operations, stated in the film that the incident began with “an anomalous behavior by a generation installation,” which led to an oscillation in the system. When operators attempted to stabilize the grid, nine additional facilities disconnected improperly, exacerbating the crisis.

“The system was operating within acceptable limits until 12:03 PM, when a generation facility’s failure triggered a cascading disconnection,” Prieto said. “The facilities responsible for voltage control did not comply with regulations, leading to a chain reaction.”

Red Eléctrica’s CEO, Roberto García Merino, also dismissed early speculation about a cyberattack, stating that the company ruled out such a scenario “within hours” of the blackout. The Spanish government had initially treated the possibility of a cyberattack as a serious concern, but Red Eléctrica’s internal investigation found no evidence to support it.

Broader Industry Tensions

The documentary portrays the blackout as a symptom of deeper conflicts within Spain’s energy sector, particularly between traditional utilities and the grid operator. Eva Pagán, Director of Communications for Redeia (Red Eléctrica’s parent company), accused unnamed companies of launching “corporate attacks” to deflect blame from their own operational failures. She claimed that while European experts’ reports on the incident have been suppressed, “selective leaks” of internal Red Eléctrica conversations have been used to shift public attention away from the technical findings.

“Some companies have treated this as a defense of their corporate interests. Defense is legitimate; attack is not. They hide the experts’ reports and circulate decontextualized content to avoid discussing the technical evidence.”

Eva Pagán, Director of Communications, Redeia

Pagán’s remarks allude to leaked audio recordings, published in the months following the blackout, in which Red Eléctrica operators expressed concerns about the rapid expansion of photovoltaic energy and the lack of synchronized power plants. While the recordings suggested internal unease about system stability, they did not conclusively identify the cause of the blackout.

Aftermath and Recommendations

The April 28, 2025, blackout left Spain and Portugal without power for up to 16 hours in some areas, disrupting transportation, communications, and essential services. A small region of southern France near the Spanish border was also affected. In the aftermath, Red Eléctrica proposed 15 recommendations to prevent future incidents, including the implementation of a dynamic voltage control system for all generation facilities.

An investigation by ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, concluded in March 2026 that the blackout was the result of “multiple interacting factors,” including misaligned voltage controls and slow manual responses to grid instability. The report described the outage as “the most severe and unprecedented blackout in Europe in the past 20 years,” with profound societal impacts.

Despite the technical findings, the documentary underscores the lingering distrust between Red Eléctrica and Spain’s energy companies. Corredor’s refusal to name the accused firm—while simultaneously asserting that its role has been confirmed by investigators—has left the industry in a state of unresolved conflict, with legal battles and regulatory scrutiny likely to continue.

Red Eléctrica’s documentary is available on the company’s official website, though it does not include the full technical reports or the names of the facilities involved in the incident.