Last week, we had a blackout. Not just a blown fuse—this was the real thing. No lights, no wifi, no way to communicate. So, I popped out onto my balcony to find out more.

My neighbors were all leaning over their railings, passing information faster than a telegram service. The auntie downstairs shouted up to the mom of three upstairs, who then told me it wasn’t just my house, my building, or even the neighborhood. It was the whole city. All of Spain. All of Portugal. The entire Iberian Peninsula. Total blackout.

Nobody panicked. They just adjusted.
My neighbor—the one who always parks in that legal gray zone out front—jimmied a speaker to his car radio so we could all hear the news. Blackout for 8 to 10 hours, maybe more, while technicians scrambled to restore power. No one knew the hows or whys, only that we should stay calm and stay home.

It was a glorious day. The sun was out. The city bloomed with festivity—a parade of falleros in traditional dress delivered bouquets to Valencia’s patron saint, San Vicente Ferrer. Residents and tourists soaked up the sunshine on terraces, sipping wine and eating whatever tapas could be served without cooking. Gelato sold fast. Cash only.

Yes, there were people stranded at the station. Hundreds had to be evacuated from stalled trains. Firefighters pried open elevators. The city laid on extra buses to get people home safely. Police directed traffic by hand.

And yet, it all happened without much fuss.

So when I read this editorial in the New York Times by Spanish journalist Paco Cerdà, I recognized that calm, unhurried reaction to what could’ve been a crisis.
👉 Read it here

By around 8 p.m., after a day of trekking back and forth to the airport in search of power and wifi to file my reports, the lights came back on. Wifi returned. Streetlamps glowed bright enough for me to keep working right outside my front door.

And life in Valencia went right back to normal.