An accident sends residents in northern Ibiza back to the last century for eight hours

No electricity and no phone coverage. Cut off. That is how residents of Portinatx, Cala d’en Serra and Cala de Xarraca spent around eight hours on Wednesday after an accident caused an electrical connection to break. The power cut left 818 customers without electricity, according to Endesa.

From shortly after 11am until around 7pm, this area in the north of Ibiza, in the municipality of Sant Joan, was left in darkness and without phone communication, with “residents and businesses completely isolated”. This was reported by a resident of Portinatx in an email sent to Diario de Ibiza, in which he explained that these kinds of incidents have been happening in this part of the island “for as long as anyone can remember”.

An area not connected to the general system

Endesa, the company responsible for the electricity supply, confirmed the outage and explained that it was caused by works carried out by a subcontracted company, which “hit one of our cables” supplying electricity to the area.

“We acted as quickly as possible to restore the supply as soon as we could”, the company said. However, Endesa warned that this part of the island “is not interconnected with the general system”, a project that is still pending due to “permit issues”.

This prevented Endesa technicians from “supplying customers through an alternative route”, meaning that the “complex” repair work took longer than expected. “It was an exceptional circumstance”, the company added. The situation even required the installation of generators to restore the system sooner.

Economic losses

The resident who reported the blackout said that “for eight hours, there was not only no electricity, but also no coverage, leaving residents and businesses completely isolated”.

Businesses that “had been open for more than a month and were fully operational were forced to work in precarious conditions or close altogether”. Some even suffered economic losses, he added, such as the ice cream shop in Portinatx square, which lost stock due to the lack of electricity.

“The feeling among residents is clear: frustration. This is not an isolated problem, but long-standing neglect that affects both residents and the island’s image”, he said.

He also criticised the “total lack of information: no prior warning, no explanations afterwards and, to the surprise of many, no mention in the media”.

Endesa, however, justified the lack of warning by stating that “it was not possible to notify people” because these kinds of faults are “completely unforeseen”. “In scheduled cases linked to maintenance works, we do give advance notice through the media”, the company recalled.