I did not see much fear. I was at work and it took about two hours for us to realize the outage was not just local. The cafeteria had gas burners and served everything they could to empty the refrigerators. We all at lunch and discussed whether those who lived far away (train trip) would need to sleep at work (they might have, I don't know what happened to them). I made the relatively short 75 minute walk home across the city.
The atmosphere was quasi-festive and most people were quite relaxed, enjoying an unexpected afternoon off. Younger people filled the bars which were serving everything they could. There were long lines at supermarkets and an occasional fellow toting a box of supplies, but mostly there were just huge numbers of people in the street and completely collapsed traffic flow (the police were out in force almost immediately, directing traffic). In the part of Madrid I was in about 1/4-1/3 of the population is from South America and I suspect most of them have seen this all before anyway. The only real stress I saw was from people that need a train to get home (because the trains weren't running) and a had a walk of more than 2-3 hours.
I got cell phone signal when I was near two hospitals which were fully operational.
It was interesting that almost immediately, while I was still at work, everyone said power was out in Portugal and France too. After an hour or two some were claiming problems in Germany, but this seemed already to be unfounded rumors.
Some younger people couldn't walk home because they didn't have google maps ...
The atmosphere was quasi-festive and most people were quite relaxed, enjoying an unexpected afternoon off. Younger people filled the bars which were serving everything they could. There were long lines at supermarkets and an occasional fellow toting a box of supplies, but mostly there were just huge numbers of people in the street and completely collapsed traffic flow (the police were out in force almost immediately, directing traffic). In the part of Madrid I was in about 1/4-1/3 of the population is from South America and I suspect most of them have seen this all before anyway. The only real stress I saw was from people that need a train to get home (because the trains weren't running) and a had a walk of more than 2-3 hours.
I got cell phone signal when I was near two hospitals which were fully operational.
It was interesting that almost immediately, while I was still at work, everyone said power was out in Portugal and France too. After an hour or two some were claiming problems in Germany, but this seemed already to be unfounded rumors.
Some younger people couldn't walk home because they didn't have google maps ...