12.41 EDT Spain's Sánchez hopeful about restoring energy; urges residents to minimise travel, not speculate as to causes, use phones responsibly Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has just given a press conference offering an update on the situation in the country. The prime minister acknowledged the “tremendous” impact on the lives of residents but sought to reassure them that the government was working on resolving the problem as soon as possible. In three regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Madrid the government will use extra emergency powers under civil protection laws.

Sanchez said that the process of restoring energy was under way across the country, thanks to interconnectors with France and Morocco and domestic energy sources, which should allow the energy supply to be restored “soon.” He said that “a strong technical fluctuation in the European electricity system” led to the blackout but that there was no “conclusive information” on what specifically caused it. He pointedly warned against speculating about the cause of the outage. “We are not ruling out any hypothesis, but we must focus on what is most important, which is restoring electricity to our homes,” he said.

Sanchez said that the hospital system was functioning despite the difficulties thanks to power generators, and while ATMs are affected, the underlying banking systems are operating normally. He also talked about train and air travel, in line with previous updates we brought you in this blog. Sanchez also asked residents to minimise travel, not spread unverified information, and use mobile phones “responsibly” by keeping calls short and using the emergency 112 line only when necessary.

Another meeting of the national security council has been called for 7pm local time, he said.