The news of the blackout

Before, the electricity would go out, and the lights would go out. Now, mobile phones, the internet, social networks, card payments, the metro, the AVE (High-Speed ​​Train) are also going down. We saw this in Monday's blackout: without electricity, the communications system goes silent.

Which caused uncertainty, anxiety attacks, and economic damage. But it had positive effects, because it reminded us of forgotten things, taught us about unknown ones, and brought about, or should bring about, changes. Namely...

The blackout put pressure on public and private stakeholders involved in the electricity sector to agree to reorganize it in the public interest, as well as addressing their own interests.

It tells us that opposition leader Feijóo's immediate demand for explanations about the causes of the accident reveals ignorance on the matter. According to experts, to pinpoint them, it will be necessary to study down to the millisecond what happened at thousands of substations that collect energy supplied by thousands of generators of different sizes from disparate energy sources. And that can't be achieved in hours, but in months.

The more functions we delegate to technology, the more we live on borrowed time.

This blackout reminds us that we enjoy great technical advances, which make our lives easier by multiplying the possibilities for interaction. But this framework can collapse in seconds and leave us defenseless: the more functions we delegate to technology, the more its failure disarms us. We live on borrowed time.

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We've learned that this debacle could be repeated, even with losses that will take longer to repair. President Sánchez's statement that it should never happen again is fine, but if the necessary measures aren't taken, the risk of disconnections will persist. (And the fact that former President Puigdemont believes it's a priority, in the midst of the crisis, for the technicians consulted by TV3 to speak in Catalan reflects a well-established disconnection from reality.)

The blackout has also allowed us to rediscover that, on exceptional days, we can be kind and supportive, deprive ourselves of our cell phones without suffering irreparable damage, yield to a dead light, and resist the temptation to loot appliance stores in the dark. We're not so bad off.