The electric blackout that affected a good part of the Iberian Peninsula on April 28 at 12:33 left a deep mark on citizenship. According to a Flash survey published by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), led by Félix Tezanos, explains that one in five citizens (21.5%) admits that he became fear during the interruption of the electricity supply, especially among women (29.1%) and young people from 25 to 34 years (31.6%).
The survey, made on April 29 and 30 through telephone interviews, collected the responses of 1,752 people residing in peninsular Spain. The field work excluded Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and the sample error is at ± 2.4% for a 95.5% confidence level.
The place where citizens were at the time of the blackout significantly marked their experience. 45.6% were at home when the incidence occurred, while another 27.6% were in their job. This last group was the most affected: 24.3% of the total interviewees declared that the blackout affected them “a lot”, and 28.1% “quite”.
By age groups, adults between 45 and 54 years were the ones who perceived the blackout as a serious problem, with 31.4% that indicates “very” affected. At the opposite end, those over 75, despite being the group that was most at their home (79.4%), experienced a lower emotional impact: only 14.8% claim to have been very affected and 19% recognize that the blackout did not affect them at all.
Notable differences are also observed according to the memory of vote in the general elections of 2023. The voters of adding and nationalist parties such as EH Bildu or ERC were the ones that in greater proportion felt fear during the electrical interruption, with rates of more than 30%, while among the voters of the PP and Vox the fear barely reached 10%.
The report also highlights the use of radio and ensures that 59.6% of citizens consider that the information provided by the Government was insufficient.
The demand for greater transparency and promptness in the institutional response was even shared by the ideologically more related citizens. For example, in the ideological strip of the left (1-3 on the CIS scale), more than 40% expressed dissatisfaction with informative management. Among those located in the center (scores 4-6), the critic ascends to 58%, while among the respondents that are located on the right (7-10), the rejection reaches levels of up to 80%.
In addition, 73% of citizens believe that the Executive should have appeared publicly in the first hour after the start of the blackout to offer explanations, compared to 18% who consider the deadline with which it acted acceptable.
This informative vacuum was even more evident among those who were at work (27.6%) or in displacement (9.5%) at the time of the blackout. In these groups, the percentage of citizens who felt fear or anguish far exceeded the national average. The lack of real -time data, the partial collapse of mobile networks and the delay in official communications fed unconfirmed theories about cyber attacks or failures in critical infrastructure, although none of these hypotheses has been ratified by the authorities to date.
With these results, the CIS shows not only the operational impact of the blackout, but also the strategic importance of information management in energy crises. Most respondents now claim that communication protocols are reinforced and more effective citizen alert mechanisms are established, in line with what happens in other European countries.
The CIS emphasizes that this progress of results is pending final coding and that a complete version with greater territorial and thematic breakdown will be published soon.
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