National power outage
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In addition to the internal investigations opened by the Spanish government and the EU to analyse the specific causes of the historic power blackout on 28 April, another judicial investigation was launched a day later: that of José Luis Calama, judge of the National High Court. Calama is investigating the events on his own initiative to rule out the possibility of cyberterrorism, i.e. "an act of computer sabotage of critical Spanish infrastructures".
The first thing the magistrate did on 29 April, after opening the aforementioned proceedings, was to request the national cryptologic centre (CCN) - an organisation attached to the national intelligence centre (CNI) - and Red Eléctrica Corporación S.A. to draw up reports to indicate "the cause or causes that led to the blackout".
The "non-extendable" deadline ordered by the investigator to present these preliminary reports was ten days, so they have entered the court "in due time and form", according to legal sources.
Now, Judge Calama is analysing these documents, protected by the secrecy of the proceedings, decreed in the same order to open the case and for a period of one month, which will expire this coming Friday.
It is usual for the public prosecutor's office of the Audiencia Nacional, which was the one who requested the secrecy, to have already requested the extension for another month. In that ruling, the judge explained that the incident affected computer systems that support infrastructures that provide essential services to society, such as health, energy, industry and transport, which meant "a critical situation for the well-being and sense of security of all citizens".
The order also included the explanation provided by the government that 60% of the energy that was being produced at the time was suddenly "lost" for five seconds, "something that had never happened before". Therefore, according to the judge, it is necessary to open an investigation because computer crimes can be classified as terrorism, "when their purpose is to seriously destabilise the constitutional order or the functioning of essential services".
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