The first sign of trouble was during a fight with the toaster. No matter how many times I tried to get the slices to stay down they just sprang back up. I tried the coffee machine, the phone charger, the lights. Nothing worked.
Then I heard a couple of neighbours out in the street asking each other if they’d lost power.
My mobile phone didn’t work – no calls, no WhatsApp, no SMS – because there was no network coverage. So I popped into a local bar to use their wifi as the staff watched ice creams melting in the fridge and the beers getting warm at lunchtime. They had no connection either so I asked a police woman outside, who knew what was happening via the police radio.
It wasn’t the street, she told me, it was all of Spain and Portugal, bits of France… The government in Madrid had convened an emergency meeting.
The neighbours began to gather outside on foldable chairs and various theories were shared. Russian hackers were the preferred culprit. The older neighbours spoke of a return to the days of the cold war. Young or old, it had to be Vladimir Putin. It just had to be that Bond villain. Why couldn’t Putin and his tangerine-faced pal in the White House just go away and leave the world alone?
It is very odd in this modern era to be entirely disconnected from the world. And it seems crazy that even the communications network is essentially reliant on the same power supply. Everything is plugged into one big feed, basically, with no back-up? Is that even possible?
As always in these situations, the older folk were wiser. Power cuts in the past were, of course, commonplace. No big deal, just get on with it. A retired neighbour, Sergi, went indoors and came back out with a load of snacks. Crisps and various nibbles. Jamón, fuet and chorizo. Fresh olives. Peanuts. None of those things needed a fridge. Even beers – warm beers, but still.
The sun was out, it was a lovely sunny day. After the initial panic of being disconnected from the modern world, it was rather nice.
Learn the lessons from the older folk and just chill for a while. It was good to have a break from all the electronic noise.
I have been a journalist for three decades, and I long ago came to realise – at a fundamental, human level – how warm and decent most people are.
I was in the north of Japan for a month after the tsunami of 2011, when families whose homes had been washed away slept on the floor in school halls. They shared food and stood together to find a way forward.
I was in Iraq for the BBC during the war, and we connected a couple of families in the street to our generator. Yeah, the BBC needed power for its outside broadcasts and all that, but those people needed to keep their fridges working.
Despite all the sociopath politicians and warlords fanning the worst human urges, despite the wars and natural disasters, humanity always, somehow, finds a way to express itself.
Then the kids came home from school. For them, the loss of mobile connection and the internet was a fate close to death. No contact with the outside world. No way to check TikTok or Instagram. But after a while, even the youngsters began to kick footballs and just mess around.
The old bells and the church clock are electrically powered these days, which meant the time had stopped at 12.35. Night came and the power was still off. Even a break from the light pollution was nice.
Adrian Addison is a journalist living in Barcelona
