Spain’s National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) — the regulator that oversees the energy sector — took this Friday (April 17) an important step in determining responsibility for the “blackout” that paralyzed the Iberian Peninsula on April 28, 2025.
The organism opened a set of 20 sanctioning processes, pointing the finger at Red Eléctrica (REE) for the most serious infraction detected so far.
According to the Spanish regulator’s report released this Friday and reported by the Spanish media, Red Eléctrica, as operator of the system, committed an infraction classified as “very serious”. These are critical failures in the management of adjustment services and programming errors that put security of supply at risk. For this reason, the company now faces a fine that could reach 60 million euros.
But REE is not alone in the dock. The supervisor also carried out investigations against giants such as Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy and Repsol. In these cases, the infractions are considered less serious and concern technical non-conformities in combined cycle and nuclear plants, which will not have responded adequately during the crisis.
Portugal prepares legal offensive for losses of 2,000 million
The decision announced in Madrid will be the “oxygen balloon” that the Portuguese government and large national industrial groups were waiting for. Although this day’s news focuses on administrative fines in Spain, the context of the previous days in Portugal already indicated a cross-border collision course.
Two days ago, sources from the Portuguese Executive confirmed that the country considers Spain’s responsibility to be “unequivocal”. With the official admission of “very serious” negligence on the part of the regulator, Portugal now gains the necessary legal basis to support civil compensation claims.
The Portuguese regulator, ERSE, had already concluded that the instability in the national grid was caused by a “contagion effect” coming from poorly programmed Spanish solar plants. The Portuguese Industrial Association (AIP) estimates that national companies lost around 2000 million euros in just 24 hours of blackout, due to production stoppages and damage to sensitive equipment and the Portuguese Government will be considering demanding the creation of an Iberian compensation fund, using the fines now applied by the Spanish regulator to compensate for the damage caused to the network managed by REN and E-Redes.
The administrative process in Spain should last between 9 and 18 months, but the legal battle for compensation in Portugal promises to start much earlier, with this new legal asset in the hands of the Portuguese authorities.
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