Alanna Gladstone, a 40-year-old film editor, had landed in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, on a flight from New York hours before the outage. She checked into her Airbnb and took a nap; by the time she woke up, the technology that the country takes for granted had gone dark.

A massive and unprecedented power outage on Monday hit large parts of Spain as well as Portugal. The blackout halted subway and railway trains, cut phone service and shut down traffic lights and ATMs for the millions of people who live across Europe's Iberian Peninsula.

THE lights are on and the bars are open as Spain and Portugal celebrate the return of electricity following a mass blackout. Electricity had been restored to nearly 90% of mainland Spain by early