La Palma power cut 2 November 2026: 20,000 customers

What does the power cut mean for visitors and residents?

On Monday 2 November 2026, around 20,000 customers on La Palma lost power, Atlántico Hoy reports. The report does not say which places were hit.

The cause of the outage has not been published. Its duration is also unpublished.

Cristina Valido points to rain hitting La Palma on Monday. The report does not say whether it triggered the outage.

The authorities have issued no practical advice for visitors or residents so far. No rules on compensation, deadlines or applications are known, so anyone living in the south of the island should ask their landlord or accommodation for the latest position.

What is the Coalición Canaria demanding from Madrid?

Cristina Valido is the Coalición Canaria-Primero Canarias candidate for the Congreso (the Spanish parliament) in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In a statement she called the repeated outages “intolerable” and sees them not as a one-off but as a weakness of the island system.

In May 2025, Valido warned the Congreso of around ten serious blackouts in the Canaries since 2009. The isolated, ageing systems, she said, had been used for longer than their intended lifespan.

In June 2025, the Coalición Canaria and the Canarian government pushed through measures in the so-called anti-blackout decree. They were meant to speed up permits for emergency generators and batteries.

The decree failed in the Congreso because the PP and Vox voted against it. Since then, Valido says, the Spanish government has passed no response of its own to the gaps in the Canarian grid.

She wants a Real decreto-ley (a decree with the force of law) before the end of the legislative term, one the Diputación Permanente can confirm. She also demands fixed deadlines for renewing the power stations, and the sources contain no response from the government.

What already happened on La Palma in 2025?

At 17:32 on 10 June 2025, the power failed across all of La Palma, reports the Canarian broadcaster RTVC. Supply returned around 20:30, about three hours later.

Alberto Hernández, the Canary Islands’ energy director, blamed a generator at the Los Guinchos power station. Pablo Casado, Endesa’s area director, said at the time that the company was reconstructing the exact sequence of events.

RTVC counts the June outage as the sixth disruption within a few weeks. In May 2025 there were outages on 1 and 11 May, put down to ground movements near the old airport in Breña Alta, and two more on 15 May that affected around 20,000 users.

Red Eléctrica said, according to RTVC, that the cause lay outside its grid, in generation. The Canarian government pointed to ageing thermal units and their maintenance.

Why is the island’s power supply so fragile?

Endesa runs the Los Guinchos power station in Breña Alta, which has the oldest generators in the Canaries, according to RTVC. More than half of its units are over 25 years old, and two are over 50.

Endesa says a state tender for new capacity has been delayed for more than 12 years. At the same time, the company denies that the failure of a single unit should bring down a whole island.

Alberto Hernández said on 9 May 2025 that the grid suffers “more than 400” faults a year across the archipelago. It stretches over around 26,000 kilometres.

For comparison, around 950,000 people on Tenerife were without power for more than seven hours in July 2020, according to RTVC. On La Gomera, RTVC reported another total blackout on 18 January 2026, after which supply returned to 100%.

Who decides on the renewal, and what happens next?

The state decides on the tender to renew power generation on La Palma, and the ministry MITECO runs it. According to Endesa, it was the only bidder, and in July 2025 it expected a decision “in the coming months”.

Diesel generation must be replaced before 2029, and seven engines at Los Guinchos must be shut down, Endesa said on 17 July 2025. The source gives no total cost for the renewal.

Endesa runs the power station and the distribution grid, Red Eléctrica the transmission grid. The Cabildo (island government) does not decide on the grid and demanded answers in May 2025.

The Canarian energy authority under Consejero Mariano Hernández Zapata can sanction operators for proven negligence. In May 2025 it gave Red Eléctrica and Endesa ten days to submit reports, and according to RTVC, Endesa was fined 600,000 euros in 2010 for an outage on Tenerife.

The cause and duration of the 2 November 2026 outage remain open, as do statements from Endesa, Red Eléctrica and the Canarian government. Whether Madrid will answer Valido’s demand is unclear, and the sources give no election date.