Three deaths in Spain linked to generator use during blackout, Spanish jobless rate rises, EU says will learn ‘lessons’ from Spain-Portugal blackout and more news on Wednesday April 30th.
Three deaths in Spain linked to generator use during blackout
Three elderly people died in Spain from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning after using a generator during the country’s nationwide electricity blackout on Monday, emergency services said.
Police said the bodies of the three were found at a home in Taboadela, a town of around 1,500 residents in the northwestern region of Galicia alongside a domestic generator used by one of the victims to power an oxygen machine, regional emergency services said in a statement.
Emergency services workers detected “a high concentration of carbon monoxide” inside the house.
Spanish media also reported that a woman died during the blackout in a fire caused by a candle in her flat in Madrid.
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Spain’s economy slows slightly in first quarter
Spain’s economic growth slowed slightly in the first quarter but the European Union’s strongest performer maintained a solid pace, official data showed Tuesday.
The economy expanded by 0.6 percent in the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter as exports and consumer spending rose sharply, according to the national statistics institute (INE).
The figure was in line with central bank forecasts.
The institute also lowered its fourth quarter growth estimate from 0.8 percent to 0.7 percent.
Spain’s economy has outpaced all other countries in the EU, growing 3.2 percent last year compared to one percent on average across the 27-nation bloc.
The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has forecast growth of 2.6 percent for 2025.
The INE also released inflation data showing consumer prices rose 2.2 percent in April, down from 2.3 percent in March as gas and fuel prices fell.
Jobless rate rises in Spain, Europe’s economic star
Spain’s unemployment rate inched up in the first quarter, official data shows, a sign of prudence by some employers in an economy still forecast to outperform its European peers this year.
The jobless rate in the European Union’s fourth-largest economy hit 11.36 percent between January and March, up from 10.61 percent in the final quarter of last year when it reached its lowest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, figures from National Statistics Institute showed.
A total of 2.79 million people were registered as unemployed at the end of March, 193,700 more than in the previous quarter when seasonal work typically rises due to the Christmas holiday.
This is the first time since the first quarter of 2024 that unemployment has increased in Spain, with joblessness up in all sectors, especially services.
Spain has a historically high unemployment rate compared to its neighbours.
The rate peaked at around 27 percent in early 2013 in the wake of the financial crises but has steadily fallen in recent years as the key tourism sector performed strongly following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Spain’s economy expanded by 3.2 percent last year, outstripping official forecasts and far outperforming its eurozone peers.
The Bank of Spain predicts the country’s economy will continue to outrun its European peers in 2025 and expand by 2.7 percent.
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EU says will learn ‘lessons’ from Spain-Portugal blackout
The European Union will learn lessons from the blackout of an “unprecedented magnitude” across the Iberian Peninsula a day earlier, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
Working closely with national electricity grid operators, Brussels will “look very closely” into the reasons for the outage, how well the EU was prepared and what lessons “can be drawn from such an incident”, chief commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho said.
The commission refused to speculate on what may have caused the outage.
An EU official, who did not wish to be named, said the blackout should be classified as a “major” level 3 electrical incident, the EU’s highest level for such events.
A panel will then have six months to investigate the incident and submit a report.
Brussels is also now pushing for bolstered electricity connections between Spain, Portugal and the rest of continental Europe.
“Having a more interconnected system in the EU is better for everyone, for market integration, for security of supply,” the official said.
