Telefónica network outage causes nationwide emergency services disruption in Spain

On Tuesday, May 20, 2025, a widespread telecommunications outage affected critical emergency services and business operations across multiple regions in Spain. 

The disruption began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with reports suggesting that emergency services in some regions may have been affected as early as 4 a.m:

• Emergency services (112) were unavailable in multiple regions including Andalusia, Aragón, La Rioja, the Basque Country, Galicia, and the Valencian Community
• In Andalusia, emergency calls were not received between 07:15 and 08:40
• In La Rioja, routing problems persisted for nearly an hour
• Fixed internet services were most severely affected, accounting for approximately 72% of complaints
• Multiple telecom providers experienced disruptions, including Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, Digi, and O2
• Major cities impacted included Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville

Telefónica confirmed that the outage was caused by routine maintenance work on their MPLS network, a key component of national data routing. What was intended to be a planned network upgrade quickly escalated into a significant service disruption that primarily affected fixed-line communications. 

By mid-morning, Telefónica and Óscar López, Spain's Minister for Digital Transformation, announced that all services had been restored. The minister stated, "We've been in contact with Telefónica from the very beginning, from the first hour, as they had recorded the incident," adding that "all the incidents have now been resolved."

This service disruption occurred just weeks after an extensive 18-hour power outage brought Spain and neighboring Portugal to a standstill in April, raising serious concerns about the resilience of critical infrastructure across the Iberian Peninsula.