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A black­out brought much of Spain and Por­tu­gal to a stand­still Mon­day, stop­ping trains, cut­ting phone ser­vice and shut­ting down traf­fic lights and ATMs for mil­lions of peo­ple across the Iber­ian Penin­su­la.

Span­ish pow­er dis­trib­u­tor Red Eléc­tri­ca de­clined to spec­u­late on the cause and said restor­ing pow­er ful­ly could take six to 10 hours. Head of op­er­a­tions Ed­uar­do Pri­eto told jour­nal­ists it was un­prece­dent­ed, call­ing the event “ex­cep­tion­al and ex­tra­or­di­nary.”

Spain’s Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez said a “strong os­cil­la­tion” in the Eu­ro­pean grid was be­hind the out­age but the cause was still be­ing de­ter­mined. He asked the pub­lic to re­frain from spec­u­la­tion, and urged peo­ple to call emer­gency ser­vices on­ly if re­al­ly nec­es­sary.