The blackout that laid bare the system
Antonio Adami (Recurrent Energy), Clara Cerdán (Solarig), Fernando Reina (Lightsourcebp), Eduardo García (Moeve) and Federico Silva Ortiz (Arba Energy) analyse the structural failures exposed by the 28 April collapse: administrative fragmentation, legal uncertainty, and regulatory saturation
by Ilaria Iaquinta
The blackout of 28 April, which left millions across the Iberian Peninsula without electricity, put the resilience of Spain’s power grid to the test. Beyond the immediate technical cause, the incident reignited a simmering debate around the legal and operational foundations of the country’s energy model.
In light of this critical event, Antonio Adami (Senior Director & General Counsel EMEA, Recurrent Energy, a Subsidiary of Canadian Solar), Clara Cerdán Molina (General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Solarig), Eduardo García (Senior Legal Counsel, Commercial and Clean Energies, Moeve), Fernando Reina Muñoz (Managing Counsel Spain, Lightsourcebp), and Federico Silva Ortiz (General Counsel & Chief Corporate Officer, Arba Energy) gathered to assess the principal regulatory risks, administrative bottlenecks, and contractual challenges facing Spain’s energy transition. Their discussion took place during the Energy Day 2025 event, organised by Iberian Lawyer and Financecommunity.es on 19 June.
RESILIENCE AND FLEXIBILITY
The urgency of reinforcing storage and hybridisation became evident. Despite progress in renewables, the Spanish grid still lacks a technical foundation that ensures stability and continuity. Large-scale battery systems are limited to fewer than twenty projects, and hybrid installations face hurdles from the very outset of the permitting process. According to García, the current legal framework “remains designed for conventional plants, with redundancies, a lack of coordination between administrations, and no real dispatch priority”. The consequence is clear: if a technology doesn’t have a defined regulatory pathway, it fails to become financially viable.
In this regard, Adami stressed the need to adapt contracts to a new context of higher operational risk. Availability clauses and safeguards against curtailment must be reviewed, and PPAs need to account for more demanding scenarios of intermittency. He also underlined the urgent need to integrate digital tools into operations and predictive management.
One of the most frequently raised issues was the excessive fragmentation of regulatory authority. Regional and local competences hamper coordination, with uncertain timelines and inconsistent criteria. The process of obtaining urban planning or environmental permits is affected by divergent technical requirements and often by a shortage of specialised technical staff. “We don’t have a unified timetable or standardised procedures; that creates uncertainty for developers”, was one of the warnings voiced.
The lack of digitalisation in administrative procedures is an additional burden. The use of digital platforms, automation of critical phases, and interoperability between registers are still far from becoming established. Adami and García agreed that this modernisation is not a luxury but a necessity to enable projects to progress with legal certainty and documentary traceability.
LEGAL CERTAINTY
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