What changes for visitors and residents in the south?
Power came back quickly on Sunday morning, according to Red Eléctrica (operator of Spain’s high-voltage grid). The company says supply was fully restored at 08:51.
El Día reports that at least 88,000 of the 160,462 affected homes had light again after a few minutes. Others waited longer, as homes in several places in the north and south of the island stayed without power at first.
The paper does not name those places, nor any holiday resorts. If you are still in the dark in a holiday let or flat in the south, contact your landlord or building manager first.
The south is in focus for a technical reason. Red Eléctrica says the two failed lines are in the south of Tenerife, but the source does not say how many homes there were affected.
What caused the outage, and how big was it?
El Día reports the outage. It says 160,462 homes on Tenerife lost power.
Red Eléctrica blames the heavy rain, which brought down a 220-kV line. Two circuits dropped off the grid, the Granadilla-Vallitos and Vallitos-Abona lines.
At the same time, the grid operator says, a large part of the generation at the Granadilla power station went offline. That left the joint system of Tenerife and La Gomera short of around 140 megawatts.
The timings differ slightly. El Día writes of an outage shortly after 08:30 and a return shortly after 09:00, while Red Eléctrica gives 08:51.
How often does bad weather cut power on Tenerife?
On 27 February 2026 a storm left more than 3,500 customers without power, according to Diario de Avisos. In Arona it was 2,829, in Vilaflor 409 and in Icod de los Vinos (El Amparo district) around 300.
During storm Therese on 20 March 2026, the Cabildo (island government) reported around 890 people without power. The utility Endesa spoke of 1,200 users across the archipelago, with Adeje, Guía de Isora and Fasnia hit hardest.
Sunday’s outage is on a different scale. The units (homes, customers, people) do not match, so an exact comparison is not possible.
How serious were earlier total blackouts?
On 29 September 2019 a “cero energético” (total grid blackout) hit Tenerife, and according to Público more than 920,000 residents were affected for about nine hours. The cause was a fault at the Granadilla substation, not rain.
In July 2020 another outage lasted more than seven hours and hit 950,000 people, according to RTVC. RTVC calls Tenerife the island most often affected.
According to a Diario de Avisos headline, the Canary Islands government fined Endesa 10 million euros over the 2019 blackout. Sunday’s outage was short by comparison, as Red Eléctrica gives 08:51 as the time of full restoration.
What can people do about spoiled food or broken appliances?
After the 2019 blackout, customers automatically received a discount of up to 10% a year, around 21 euros for urban households, according to the consumer group OCU. OCU called that “clearly inadequate”.
OCU says separate claims are possible for spoiled food and damaged appliances. Start by writing to your electricity supplier’s customer service.
If that does not help, send a complaint to the Canary Islands economy authority, which must reply within six months, and to the municipal consumer office OMIC. OCU also advises keeping receipts and photos and checking your home contents insurance.
El Día’s report does not say whether a discount or compensation is planned for 1 November. The current legal basis for such cases was not available.
What remains unclear, and what happens next?
It is unclear how many homes were still without power on Sunday morning and when they got it back. El Día gives neither a figure nor a time.
The bad weather is not over, as AEMET has a yellow warning for the five westernmost islands, according to El Día. Orange applies to the Tenerife metropolitan area and western La Palma.
The Canary Islands government issued a rain warning for the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. According to El Día, several public events were cancelled.
The grid remains a standing issue: according to Diario de Avisos (February 2026), Red Eléctrica warns that 62 approved generation projects totalling over 1,000 megawatts cannot rule out outages on the island grids. For Tenerife the target is 370 megawatts.
The responsible ministry then asked Red Eléctrica to name supply gaps up to 2031 within 15 days. None of the sources gives a date for further information on Sunday’s outage.