Spain’s blackout may have cost the economy almost €1billion

Spain’s nationwide blackout on Monday has cost the economy an estimated €400m so far.

Economy and Business minister Carlos Cuerpo said the sudden power outage caused authorised payments to plummet by 55% compared to other similar Mondays. 

The difference was around €400m, although up to €140m is thought to have been recuperated. 

However, Cuerpo told a press conference that the real damage could increase to €800m once all the data is analysed. 

He said it is ‘too soon’ to know the total impact of the ‘unprecendented’ event. 

It comes as the head of Red Electrica refused to resign over failure, insisting that it would not happen again ‘because we have learned.’ 

Speaking to Cadena SER, Beatriz Corredor claimed Red Electrica had ‘more or less pinpointed’ the cause of the meltdown. 

However she said there are millions more data points that must be analysed before the full picture is realised. 

She said: ‘We operate the national control centre, but there are 35 other centres to which all the generators report. 

‘This is the report that Red Electrica and the government have requested to determine which system went offline.’