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The power outage on April 28 in Spain and Portugal was accompanied by hoaxes and disinformation from the very beginning. In the first few minutes, content circulated attributing it to a Russian cyberattack or unusual atmospheric phenomena and allegedly based on sources like CNN or Reuters. These disinformative contents were amplified by both national and international media.
They have spread in English, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic or Indonesian. Some of them, such as the supposed satellite images, have been promoted by Russian disinformation and propaganda networks, like Pravda. In other cases, media outlets were impersonated, such as in Operation Matryoshka, attributed to Russia.
Von der Leyen's false statements pointing to Russia as responsible for a cyberattack: first disinformation detected
23 minutes after the blackout, at 12:56 on April 28, 11:56 in Portugal, a text from a supposed CNN article in Portuguese. It included non-existent statements by Ursula Von der Leyen attributing the blackout to a Russian cyberattack and calling it a threat to European sovereignty. In Maldita.es we count that day that the statements were a hoax and that CNN had not published that article.
This was the first disinformation detected on the day of the blackout. After the Facebook post in Portuguese, it also circulated on other networks like WhatsApp and in different languages: English, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Indonesian, even after both the European Commission and CNN in Portugal. They claimed that the content circulating was misattributed. Meanwhile, the blackout continued in the Iberian Peninsula, where service was not completely restored throughout the territory until the 29th at 11:15.
Around 16:00 it was reported that the blackout had been caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”: it was shared by several media outlets due to a Reuters alert that was later deleted.
Another piece of disinformation during the blackout said that Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), the Portuguese equivalent of Spain’s national electricity operator, had attributed the problem to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” that occurred in Spain.
Some media published it as real news. CNN Portugal, for example, stated that the origin was an alert from the Reuters news agency citing alleged REN sources. The Portuguese organisation denies having made these statements and, as reported by Reuters to the Catalan fact-checking outlet, Verificat, the alert was eliminated.
CNN Portugal published it (although they corrected it later) at 16:08 (Spanish time). Some British media also did so around that time, such as Sky News (16:03) and the BBC (16:07), but these two did not clarify whether their source had been Reuters and as of May 7 they have not corrected their articles.
Afterward, various contents shared on Twitter (now X) screenshots of those media articles who cited the “rare atmospheric phenomenon” in various languages, such as English, German or Italian. As of May 7, 2025, Red Eléctrica Española (REE) has not yet communicated the causes of the Iberian blackout and investigations are underway.
Although we have not been able to independently verify whether Reuters sent out that alert, the first reported appearance of this content, even before the publications of CNN Portugal, BBC or Sky News, was at 16:01. It was published in English by CGTN, the Chinese government's official television channel, noted by the European External Action Service (EEAS) in its latest report for “coordinating and amplifying information manipulation operations.”
One minute later, at 16:02, the Spanish-language account Alerta News 24 also shared it. Maldita.es had previously detected disinformation from this account, such as a fake shooting in Ecuador or this other one some decontextualized statements on the policies of Javier Milei.
Content with thousands of views shared the narrative of the “rare atmospheric phenomenon” in English, Portuguese, Italian and French.
At the same time as the “rare atmospheric phenomenon” disinformation, another similar alert circulated about an “induced atmospheric vibration”
At exactly the same time, at 16:01, the Chinese channel CGTN published another quote attributed to the Portuguese energy operator REN in which he supposedly said that the blackout was due to a phenomenon called “induced atmospheric vibration” recorded on high voltage lines. This is also a hoax. REN didn't say this and the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) has said that no unusual atmospheric phenomenon was recorded before the blackout.
Like that of the “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, the content was spread by several media outlets and was again based on Reuters. In Spain, it was published by several sources, such as COPE or 20 Minutos (as of May 7, they have not corrected their information). Internationally, The Guardian published it as well, though it later corrected the article and stated it had been “incorrectly attributed to REN.”
As with the previous hoax, captures of the publications were shared on social networks in the media, such as this Portuguese post sharing CNN Brazil’s version.
Hours later, some content continued to spread this narrative with more elaborate explanations (in English or in Italian). Facta News, Italian fact-checking organisation, published an article the next day showing that the content had been shared among others by the New York Post (based on a USA Today article), or Rai News, Italian public broadcaster. As of May 7, these three pages have not corrected their contents either.
Satellite images showing Spain and Portugal in darkness spread among others by the Pravda network
Another disinformation strategy identified by Maldita.es and other fact-checkers the day of the blackout was to use alleged satellite images showing the Iberian Peninsula in darkness while the rest of Europe appeared illuminated. As published by Maldita.es, many of these images are wrong because they include dark areas that were not really dark, such as the Balearic Islands or France.
Some images show nighttime images with lit cities, yet they were posted at times when it was still daylight, making such images impossible. Others mistakenly mention areas like France, Germany, Greece, or Belgium as affected, though they did not experience a blackout.
NASA’s publicly released daily satellite images show partial effects of the outage, not a complete blackout of Spain and Portugal. Other private satellite image providers could have taken night photos, but none of the widely shared images cite a source.
These types of images were spread by the red Pravda, disseminator of Russian propaganda and disinformation. It published itin its version in Catalan or on their page dedicated to Belgium on April 29. The same image had been published hours earlier on a social network called Pikabu in Russian.
During the days following the blackout, spread in various languages these and other variants of night satellite photos in French, Italian, Spanish and English.
The video of the supposedly demolished nuclear power plant has been spread in several languages with criticism of green policies
On April 28, the day of the blackout, a video circulated in Spanish showing workers celebrating the demolition of a supposed nuclear power plant. The content has been shared along with messages that criticize European green policies and the elimination of nuclear energy.
The real video is from 2022 and the demolished building belonged to a coal thermal power plant in La Robla (León), not a nuclear plant. The plant, owned by the company Naturgy, was closed in 2020 after the company decided not to invest in upgrades required by the 2010 EU emissions directive.
In the following days it has also circulated in Portuguese, English, French, Arabic and Korean with similar messages. Polígrafo, a Portuguese fact-checking organisation member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN), has fact-check it, as well as Maldita.es.
Operation Matryoshka: a Russian campaign that impersonates media to publish disinformation
On the night of April 29, Telegram channels began sharing content that posed as a publication from the British newspaper The Independent and a video that also impersonated the French network France24. Both claimed that the blackout was a consequence of the EU sanctions against Russia following the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
This is a Russian disinformation operation known as Operation Matryoshka (referring to the famous Russian dolls). The operation involves impersonating media outlets to spread disinformation content and subsequently asking media and fact-checkers to verify it. It was unveiled in 2024 by AFP Factual and the Antibot4Navalny activist collective.
After the content was posted on Telegram, it was picked up by the pro-Russian propaganda network Pravda on its English and Spanish pages. This is not the first time this network has participated in a disinformation campaign aimed at sowing chaos and confusion after an event in Spain. They did the same after the DANA storm in Valencia, launching a hoax about the King’s entourage, which was actually the Madrid Municipal Police.
In addition to the supposed The Independent front page, a fake France24 video was also shared, impersonating its logo and typography.
As Maldita.es explained, there is no evidence that The Independent or France 24 have published this content. There is also no evidence that the widespread power blackout on 28 April was a consequence of or related to EU sanctions against Russia. As of May 7, 2025, Red Eléctrica Española (REE) has not yet communicated the causes of the Iberian blackout.
