blackout
When a radio was suddenly worth gold
The entire Iberian Peninsula was around nine hours without electricity. What was lacking in people was information. A German teacher reports in Barcelona.
At 11:07 p.m. last night Gerhard Werner wrote to me: “The juice flows again!” Relief after a good nine hours of power failure on the entire Iberian Peninsula. The biggest blackout ever. Also in the Gracia district in Barcelona, where the 56-year-old has lived and worked as an independent language teacher for more than ten years.
The mobile phone network in Barcelona worked for a few minutes in the evening. “Already a topic in the media in DE?” Gerhard Werner wanted to know from me at 5:34 p.m. Because that was what made him and certainly many people the most difficult: the lack of information. “The network collapsed gradually,” says Werner this morning. “Finally, SMS still worked.” And nobody knew what was going on.
Everyone stood around the cars and wanted to hear radio
A radio was suddenly worth gold. With battery operation. And so people gathered for cars to follow the news. Driving was possible, but it was not. A narrow line between the need for information and emptying the car battery in the stand. “There were quick snakes in front of shops to get batteries and candles,” Werner recalls the blackout day. Everyone was very quiet and disciplined. Even road traffic worked “surprisingly good” without traffic lights.
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It was royal who had a small, no matter how old transistor radio and suitable batteries. The news went from mouth to mouth, “street full of pedestrians”, noted Werner and 8:41 p.m. And: “Atmosphere pretty relaxed, no siren howl, don’t panic.” When Gerhard Werner finally found his old, small radio, and even suitable batteries … the juice flowed again.
Source: Stern
