section_path: Causes/Cyberattack
section_name: Cyberattack
paragraph_text: Cyberattack
  
  Spain's National Cybersecurity Institute was reported to be investigating the possibility that a cyberattack caused the incident. Initial reports are mixed on the likelihood of the cause being a cyberattack, with several government officials ruling it out, and The Wall Street Journal claiming that "the outages bear hallmarks of a sophisticated cyberattack on the region's power grid" that fit a pattern of increased cyberattacks in Europe. A thorough forensic analysis was estimated to take one to three weeks.
  
  On the morning of 29 April, REE attributed the outage to a disconnection of the grid in the south-west of Spain. The institution ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the blackout and announced that it was investigating the cause of the disconnection.
  
  Citizens must know that the government will get to the bottom of this. Measures will be taken, and all private operators will be held accountable. To this end, the Spanish government has concluded a commission of inquiry led by the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
  
  Audiencia Nacional judge José Luis Calama initiated preliminary investigations to determine whether the national outage could have been an act of sabotage against critical Spanish infrastructure, which, according to newspaper Vozpópuli, would be considered an act of terrorism.
  
  According to El Mundo, Spain's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío, discarded the possibility that the blackout was the result of a cyberattack during his bilateral meetings with the US administration in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, this possibility was officially kept open in Spain.