The Odyssey of going to work or returning home with a blackout: « Like Filomena, but with heat » | Spain

The bewilderment that is provoking the mass blackout that affects Spain and Portugal It is noticeable especially in the great transport nodes of Madrid. Going or returning from work has become an unexpected odysse apps of the VTC inaccessible by the also massive fall of the mobile and data network.

In the underground exchanger of Avenida de América, the only one in which four subway lines, head and term of numerous urban and interurban bus lines converge, people have gone into mass to the street and ask how to get home or how to get to work. A young woman tells another that she will have to go on foot, but she doesn’t know how or where to throw because she usually does that journey underground, by subway. « Look Google Maps … ah, not you can’t, » he gets for any response.

The situation is repeated in the roundabout of Manuel Becerra and in sales, other nerve centers of transport in the capital, and in general throughout this long section of Alcalá Street, the most extensive in the capital. From the sales bridge, which sews a section and another from Alcalá above the M-30, a gigantic bottling in the lanes in the southern direction is appreciated. Already on the other side of the bridge, in the District of Linear City, a neighbor has decided to open the doors of his car parked on the street of Máximo San Juan and has put the radio at full volume so that pedestrians can listen to the news.

Around them, people walk alternating with furtive looks at mobile phones that in this area, the District of Linear City, do not receive a sign. « I do not arrive, I do not arrive, » laments a young man who runs as fast as the crowd that fills the sidewalks, particularly narrow in this section of the street.

The traffic lights have run out of light from the Plaza de Manuel Becerra until well into the District of Linear City, with the sole exception of Brothers García Noblejas Avenue, and cars circulate slowly to let the numerous pedestrians pass. “This is like Filomenabut with heat, ”says a young man, in reference to the snow storm that in 2021 paralyzed the capital for days. It is sitting on a terrace of a bar that, like all the rest of the shops, has remained dark. The thermometer marks 21º.

It is not possible to find a free taxi, he regrets a woman who accompanies a man of advanced age on the edge of the sidewalk next to the Alcalá Norte Shopping Center. All buses circulate to the maximum of their capacity. Another woman, elderly, asks at the door of a Carrefour supermarket, in which there is a tail of about 25 people waiting to enter, if you can pay by card and a manager tells you no. Several clients leave the premises with Packs of bottled water in rister.

Long rows are also the norm in bus stops, full of citizens. « I am worth any bus in this direction, » says a traveler shouting to the driver. The employee of a cafeteria who has just entered his work asks a partner in a tone if there will be a subway for when he has to leave, at night. But that anguish does not make a dent in all those who on Monday have seen their task suspended for greater cause. An electrician comments jociento to some gang companions: « The Spaniards are not accustomed to a real blackout. If they lived in Peru … ».