Power outages "paralyze" the Iberian economy - Spanish and Portuguese companies calculate the costs after the situation normalizes
As factories, shops and hotels across Spain and Portugal gradually returned to normal after a massive power outage, business associations and companies began to count the costs.
Spain's main business lobby, CEOE, estimated that the shutdown would shave 1.6 billion euros, or 0.1%, from gross domestic product, noting that oil refineries could take a week or more to fully resume operations, while some industrial furnaces had been damaged.
The meat industry estimated damages at up to 190 million euros after refrigerators lost power, among other factors. The outage lasted more than 12 hours in some areas of Spain.
Most grocery stores began operating normally, the sector association ANGED said, but they were still assessing how much of their produce had been spoiled or how much business they had lost when card payment systems were down and ATMs were out of order.
Many people rushed to buy water, canned food, flashlights and battery-powered radios to stay informed, but not everyone could find cash. The Bank of Spain said card payments and ATMs were back in operation.
As the industry faced some of its biggest challenges, Volkswagen's factory in the Navarra region, which employs 4,600 people, only resumed production at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The factory had lost about 1,400 cars since Monday, a company spokesman said.
Volkswagen's Spanish brand SEAT also said production at its Barcelona factory, which employs around 14,000 people, had not fully returned to normal operations after power supplies resumed at 1am local time.
Other sectors, such as Spain's important tourism industry, remained largely unscathed.
"At the moment, we are not receiving any significant reports regarding cancellations," said the head of Spain's hotel association CEHAT, although the telecommunications outage had created a "very complicated situation."
"Many guests were accommodated in hotels. We had sufficient capacity and were even able to assist some public agencies that requested assistance in accommodating people," he said.
Hoping for a quick solution to the power outage, some companies kept staff on site for hours, while others, like industrial manufacturer Thune Eureka in northern Spain, sent workers home early.
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