Trapped Beneath Madrid: Surviving the Day the City Went Dark

By Lara Mitchell Guirao

It was a normal Monday in Madrid — until it wasn’t.

I was on my way to my 1 p.m. class, chatting on the phone with my mum about the job interview I had scheduled later that day. As the metro rumbled between Opera and Santo Domingo, it suddenly jerked to a halt.

My call with my mum cut off mid-sentence.

The driver’s voice crackled over the intercom: “Just a few minutes, everyone. We seem to be having some troubles.”

We waited. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. My anxiety started to build.

I’m not someone who usually suffers from claustrophobia or panic attacks, but trapped underground, cut off from communication, something inside me snapped. I couldn’t breathe.
My whole body tingled as I hyperventilated. Strangers rallied around me — pressing on pressure points, giving me water, elevating my legs — desperate attempts to calm me.

It felt like hours. Then, at last, security pried open what I assume was the emergency door. We began moving single file into the tunnel, our phone flashlights lighting the dark. I was shaking so much I could barely make it down the stairs.

A police officer saw me struggling. Without hesitation, he grabbed my hand — firm, steady — and said, “There’s a national power outage. We don’t know what’s happening.” He stayed by my side, leading me up a ladder and onto a platform, asking gently if I needed further help.

I mustered my bravest voice: “No, I’m good.”

Above ground, the situation was chaotic.

No service. No communication. No idea what to do.

I walked toward Gran Vía, thinking I could catch a bus to campus. But the streets were packed, the buses overflowing. Traffic wasn’t moving. As I passed my friend’s apartment, I thought maybe they could help — but the buzzers were dead.

Even if they were home, there was no way to reach them.

I frantically kept calling my mum while navigating the sea of people, but the calls kept dropping.

By the time I reached Plaza de España, I managed to get on a packed bus — only to start panicking again.

It was so crammed, barely moving. I hyperventilated again. I had to get off.

At that moment, I decided: I would walk.

Heading in the direction of my university, I passed people crowding around hand radios. Streets were cornered off. Police were manually directing traffic because there were no functioning traffic lights. I realized how vulnerable I was — if I got lost, I couldn’t just “look it up.” But I trusted myself and kept walking.

Finally, relief: I spotted girls from SLU Madrid — people I knew. I collapsed into their arms, crying. They told me classes were cancelled and offered me refuge in a nearby apartment where other students had gathered. I accepted without hesitation.

After catching my breath, I knew I needed to get home. I joined two girls walking toward Moncloa, rumoured to still have some cellphone service. We crossed a Madrid I barely recognized: shops shuttered,police manually directing traffic, families anxiously trying to reunite, stranded travellers with suitcases, taxis packed and people with radios glued to their ears.

Two young boys were singing and playing guitar on a sidewalk, and for a brief moment, amidst the whispers of “locura,” “inesperable,” and “apagón,” there was smiles. That small pocket of joy saved me.

I walked with the group toward Plaza Mayor and then split off alone, heading to Retiro, where I live. It was a 30-minute walk. I had no other choice.

Along the way, alimentación stores had long lines of people buying water, snacks — essentials. I suddenly realized: I had no food at home. No microwave. No cash. No card machines working.

At my local “chino,” where I’ve been going for four years, I filled a basket with drinks and snacks, thinking they’d trust me to pay later. But when I got to the counter: “No, no. Only cash.”

I pleaded, explaining I lived nearby and would come back tomorrow. But the answer was still no.

Luckily, a kind stranger lent me €10 and gave me his number to pay him back later. I nearly cried again.

Back at home, we raced through the apartment looking for flashlights and radios.

We found an old hand radio my grandma used to use. When it finally crackled to life with the news — “Crisis 3 Emergency” — I felt overwhelming relief. We clung to that little radio for the next seven hours, our only lifeline to the outside world.

As the day got later, we realized we were hungry — and had almost no cash.

We scrounged every coin we could find: two, five, and ten-cent pieces, wrapping them in plastic to organize €1 bundles.

We walked to the nearest supermarket. Along the way, we saw police officers on horseback — an extraordinary, almost unsettling sight in the middle of the city. As one horse walked centimeters past me, barely under control, I realized how serious the situation was.

Traffic was still gridlocked, yet some drivers kept honking — as if radios hadn’t told them the power outage was national. I felt a flash of anger at their obliviousness.

At the supermarket, a long line snaked outside. We waited 30 to 40 minutes, unsure if we’d even be able to buy anything with our coins.

Inside, each group had to be escorted by a store assistant who manually wrote down barcodes with no weighing produce, no scales working.

A kind shop assistant helped us piece together a small haul: a loaf of bread, some ham, cheese, and chorizo. We were a few cents short, but they let us go, a small act of kindness that felt enormous.

With the generosity of strangers and the resilience of the city around us, we returned home and celebrated our modest victory — making sandwiches, playing rounds of Uno and Gin Rummy, and listening to the hopeful crackle of voices on the hand radio.

As darkness fell, we lit candles and prepared for a long night. But just as we settled in, the lights flickered back on. Power returned — and even more crucially for me, so did cellphone service.

The first thing I did was call my mum.

I needed her to know: I was safe. I had survived the day Madrid went dark.