We were expecting to hear from Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about the power cut a while ago – at 17:15 local time (16:15 BST) – but the news conference is yet to start.

We’ll bring you the latest lines from him as soon as we have them.

Spain’s nuclear reactors are in “safe condition” despite the country’s power outages, Spain’s nuclear safety council says.

The reactors automatically stopped working after the outage but emergency generators kicked in.

The shutdown was in line with the way in which Spain’s power plants are designed to respond to an unexpected power outage, the council adds.

Here are some of the latest images we’ve been seeing showing the fallout from the power outages across Spain and Portugal.

Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro says there is “no indication” that a cyber attack is behind the power cut impacting Portugal and Spain.

Speaking to journalists, he says the cause of the power cut is still unknown but it is now clear that it “did not originate in Portugal”.

He says he expects electrical power to return to Portugal “in the coming hours”.

Montenegro says he is taking a break from a ministerial meeting about the incident to visit Portuguese power firm REN to find out more.

The grid operator earlier said “extreme variations” in Spain’s temperature caused the power failure, according to Reuters news agency.

We can now bring you the latest from the organisers of the Madrid Open tennis tournament, which was disrupted by the power cut earlier.

Organiser say “in order to guarantee general safety, the nationwide power-cut experienced in Spain on Monday 28 April has forced the cancellation of both the day and night sessions at the Mutua Madrid Open”.

Here’s more now from the new statement from Spanish grid operator, Red Electrica.

The statement adds that work is under way to “gradually” recover electricity throughout the Iberian peninsular.

Voltage has already been recovered in some areas – and consumers will start to see supply returning, it says.

The Spanish grid operator has said that power is being restored “in several areas of the north, south and west of the [Iberian] peninsula”.

Raphael Sheridan
Reporting from Malaga

I’m currently in staying in an apartment in Malaga – some bars and restaurants here have stayed open here benefitting from the glorious weather.

At 15.43 local time (14.43 BST), the apartment’s oven and washing machine suddenly started chirping, and a man on the street below me whooped.

Power has, it seems, returned to Malaga.

For about an hour I had been without phone service or internet – and therefore completely cut-off from the world – which leant an uneasiness to an otherwise sunny, peaceful day.

The hope here is that the lights now stay on.

French grid operator RTE is helping supply Spain’s electrical network, it says.

RTE says it has already re-supplied 700 MW of Spanish consumption and it will increase aid as soon as the Iberian grid can receive it.

There is no current impact in France, the company says, adding that all power has been restored to homes in the French Basque Country that were left without power earlier today.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s energy minister German Galushchenko says, external his country is “ready to assist in restoring the stable operation” of Europe’s energy networks and will share “knowledge and experience”.

Guy Hedgecoe
Madrid correspondent

I was on a train in Madrid at Chamartín station, one of the main stations in the city, when the outage happened.

A member of staff came on the train and told us to get off the train and evacuate the station. There’s a huge crowd of people outside at the moment.

We know other rail services around the country have been affected – underground rails have been heavily hit.

Traffic lights also seem to be affected, certainly in the bigger cities, so this all creates a certain amount of chaos.

People are desperate to find out if they can get back on their trains, if there’s going to be any service later today – there’s just a great deal of uncertainty.

James Kelly
BBC News

Tom McGilloway, 31, is on holiday in Lisbon visiting members of his partner’s family.

They are due to return home to London tonight but are not clear whether their flight will be affected.

“It’s a strange vibe because everyone’s aware there is chaos and you can’t get public transport, no one knows what’s going on at the airport,” he tells me this afternoon.

“A lot of the restaurants and the shops can’t take payments because they have wired terminals, so it’s meant that everyone’s flooded out of main areas to a lot of the pop-up vendors.”

He says for the time being people are getting drinks and food – but vendors have told him they will only be able to keep working until the batteries run out on their payment terminals.

“If I need to book a hotel if the plane is cancelled, I don’t know how I can do it if payments are down,” he adds.

“My partner’s parents are trying to get petrol so they can pick us up to take us back to Alentejo but many petrol stations are closed or not taking payment. We might be stuck with no plan for where to stay tonight.”

• We heard earlier from someone else in Spain, Lesley, who said her husband was driving around Murcia “trying to find a petrol station that’s open to get petrol for the generator so that we can plug in the fridge”

“Power outages in Portugal and Spain are impacting access to some airports and affecting some airports operations including Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona,” easyJet says in a statement.

“Like all airlines, we are experiencing some disruption to our flying programme meaning that some return flights from Lisbon and Madrid have been unable to operate,” the airline goes on, adding: “Our flying programme at Porto and Faro airports is operating as planned.”

The flight operator tells passengers to check local travel advice and their flight tracker for more information.

They also say passengers in Spain or Portugal who are unable to travel are being provided with free of charge transfers within 72 hours, or a flight voucher.

In an update, Spain’s power company says voltage has been restored in certain substations in areas of the north, south and west of the country.

“We continue to work with all resources to achieve the restoration of supply as soon as possible throughout the entire territory,” Red Electrica says.

But in an update of its own, Spain’s national railway firm Renfe says all services are still suspended “due to power outages”.

Meanwhile, Madrid Metro service says all its lines also remain closed.

We’re now hearing from Antonio Costa, President of the European Council, who says there are no indications that today’s power outage has been caused by a cyber attack at this point.

Costa says he is in touch with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Portuguese PM Luís Montenegro – with grid operators in both countries “working on finding the cause, and on restoring the electricity supply”.

The European Commission says it is “in contact” with Spanish and Portuguese authorities “to understand the underlying cause” of today’s blackout.

“The commission will keep monitoring the situation and make sure that there is smooth information exchange,” a spokesperson for the EU’s executive arm says.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also been in touch with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. European authorities will “coordinate efforts and share information to help restore the electricity system”, von der Leyen writes on social media.

Antonio Costa, a former Portuguese premier who heads the European Council of EU member states, is also in contact with the Spanish and Portuguese leaders, EU officials add.

Some final remarks from Portugal’s power firm REN, which goes on on to say that, “due to the complexity of the phenomenon and the need to rebalance electricity flows internationally, it is estimated that full normalisation of the network could take up to a week”.

Earlier, the head of Spain’s electricity network said that restoring power could take between six and 10 hours.

We have a bit more for you now from the Portuguese energy company REN (Rede Eletrica Nacional).

It says that “due to extreme temperature variations in the interior or Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 KV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration'”.

“These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”

As we said in our last post, Spain is yet to respond to these claims.

We’re now hearing from Portugal’s grid operator, REN, which says interruptions to the country’s power supply were the result of a “fault in the Spanish electricity grid.

They say this was related to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, but don’t clarify what that means.

Spain is yet to respond to the claim.

We’ll bring you more on this in our next few posts.

Holly Wallis
Live reporter

Will David, 40, a Briton living in Lisbon, says he was having a haircut and beard trim in the basement of a barbers in Lisbon when the power went down.

“Customers needing electric razors had to leave in various states of haircut and shave completion,” says Will.

Rita, the barber, kindly found him a spot by the window upstairs to finish the cut with scissors and left Will looking “halfway presentable”.

“The walk home felt very strange, both with the lack of traffic lights meaning a complete free-for-all for vehicles and pedestrians on the roads – as well as so many people milling around outside their places of work with nothing to do.”

Josh Parry
LGBT and identity reporter

Curtis Gladden, 29, is originally from Liverpool but recently moved to in La Vall D’Uixo, about 30 miles from Valencia.

He tells BBC News his phone signal hadn’t worked for around two hours, which he says was “scary” as he struggled to get updates about what was happening.

Now the signal has returned, he and other locals are using the time without electricity to get outside and enjoy a drink in the town’s pavement cafes.

It’s a local holiday in some parts of Spain, known as Saint Vincent Ferrer’s day.

Curtis and his partner Miguel were hoping to join in the festivities but say they are “uncertain” whether they’ll take place.

He says: “Nothing is working; we came to get some food and a drink but they can’t cook without electricity. There’s supposed to be a festival today but we’re not sure if it will happen now.”