Telefónica confirms a nationwide outage following a system update, disrupting 112 emergency lines in several Spanish regions.
Credit : Cris Canton, Shutterstock
Telefónica outage leaves emergency lines down and businesses scrambling
Tuesday May 20, didn’t start well for thousands of people across Spain. A major glitch in Telefónica’s system caused widespread disruption, not just for businesses, but for something far more serious: emergency numbers stopped working in several parts of the country.
Telefónica outage disrupts 112 emergency services in several Spanish regions
It all started early this morning, when Telefónica — one of Spain’s biggest telecom providers — ran a network update that didn’t go to plan. What was meant to be routine maintenance quickly turned into a headache, knocking out services for many of the company’s clients.
But the real concern came when 112, the emergency number, stopped working in at least four autonomous communities. In the Basque Country, for example, the local government had to jump on social media to tell people to call 900 112 088 instead, after they realised calls weren’t getting through to their emergency centre — and that the issue had likely been going on since 4 a.m.
By mid-morning, things were mostly back to normal in that region, but others weren’t so lucky. In Aragón, authorities shared not one but three alternative phone numbers that people could call in an emergency:
683 63 82 73, 683 13 46 45, and 660 70 58 97 — just in case the main line stayed down.
Valencia also had to act fast, setting up a temporary emergency number: 963 428 000.
Telefónica network failure disrupts business operations across Spain
And it wasn’t just emergency lines. All over Spain, companies woke up to broken systems. Computers weren’t connecting, software wasn’t loading, some firms were practically frozen, with no access to the tools they needed to run their day.
The issue only affected Telefónica customers, but that’s no small group. From local councils to private firms, a huge number of people rely on Telefónica every day, and they were left in the dark, both literally and figuratively, as the company worked behind the scenes to fix things.
Telefónica responds to outage
A spokesperson for Telefónica told to ABC that the problem came from a network update and that engineers are working to resolve it as fast as possible. For now, emergency lines are slowly coming back online, and Telefónica says it’s close to resolving the issue.
Stay tuned with Euro Weekly News for more news from Spain
