| Two stories in the news yesterday were both about power. In Spain, most of the country lost electricity under circumstances that Clara Hernanz Lizarraga says are very much still unclear. In Canada, voters went to the polls to decide which party will rule over Parliament and, as Brian Platt writes, negotiate with Donald Trump. Plus: A factory Trump celebrated in his first term is now shuttered. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Monday was a typically sunny spring day in Madrid. Shortly after noon, I stood waiting for a crossing light to turn green when, suddenly, I realized there was no green light. Or red. Or yellow. It was entirely dark. I looked down the street, and all the other lights were out as well. Within seconds, the intersection erupted into chaos. Drivers lurched ahead, then slammed on their brakes as others cut in front of them. Motorcyclists wove between cars trying to get ahead. Pedestrians cautiously made their way across streets. Tempers flared, and some drivers honked and shouted, while others shrugged or scowled. Everyone was mystified. If I’d had a ladder tall enough, I could have climbed up to see that the lights in all of Madrid, in fact virtually all of Spain, were dark. Across the city, cars were soon stranded in snaking lines that stretched for kilometers in every direction. Beneath the streets, subways got stuck in the tunnels. Out in the countryside, high-speed trains became no-speed tubes, frozen on the tracks as the overhead wires no longer provided any power. As I made my way down Castellana, one of the capital’s main arteries, workers flooded the sidewalks, lifting their phones skyward in hopes of catching a scarce bar of signal. But within an hour, the city had shifted into a sort of crisis-holiday mode: While frustrated drivers crept through the gridlock, sidewalk cafes filled with people sipping beer and wine and enjoying the afternoon sunshine. A few good Samaritans stood at intersections directing traffic.  Madrid in the dark on Monday evening. Photographer: Anadolu/Anadolu Red Electrica, the company that operates Spain’s grid, says that at 12:33 p.m. almost two-thirds of power vanished in just five seconds—plunging virtually the entire country, as well as neighboring Portugal, into the dark. No factories, no stores, no restaurants, no card payments and, most important, no phones. Experts are poring over the details and probably will be for months. Was it a cyberattack? A surge of solar on a brilliantly sunny day? For now, the former seems unlikely. And the latter may have played a role but probably didn’t trigger the crisis. Even though events like this are extremely rare, they’re not impossible. Learning how to keep them from happening, or at least how to minimize the impact, is important as global electricity demand balloons and renewables become an ever-greater part of the mix. The blackout showed that governments should pay far more attention to backup systems that can keep subways, trains, traffic lights and mobile networks running in emergencies. Red Electrica says the blackout happened after back-to-back incidents: A power plant—probably solar—in southwest Spain suddenly disconnected itself, destabilizing the system. Just over one second later, the same thing happened at a second plant. Soon, the connections between the Spanish and French grids were severed, isolating the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe’s power network. Immediately after, all of Spain’s renewable-energy generation went offline, forcing a complete shutdown of the country’s remaining power sources. Although an excess of solar power probably wasn’t the root cause, it might have aggravated the situation once the system started to go down. Normally, the grid’s stability is ensured by the turbines in gas, hydro or nuclear plants. These reliably spin, providing what the industry calls “inertia” and keeping things moving smoothly. Solar doesn’t provide the same stabilizing effect. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said an oversupply of renewables wasn’t to blame, but experts are still looking into whether that contributed to the rapid failure of the system. The situation has become even more confusing as conflicting opinions emerge about any possible cyberattack. Red Electrica dismisses the idea, insisting its systems weren’t compromised. But government officials were more cautious, and a judge on Tuesday announced an investigation into the matter. “It wouldn’t be smart,” Sanchez said, “to confirm or deny a cyberattack just yet.” —Clara Hernanz Lizarraga, with William Mathis Canada Picks Carney to Face Off With Trump |  Mark Carney speaks to his supporters after winning the Canadian election. Photographer: Andrej Ivanov/Getty Images North America In the big picture, Mark Carney’s win in Canada’s election on Monday is easy to explain. Voters simply trusted Carney and the Liberal Party as the best choice to square off against US President Donald Trump, who’s threatened Canada’s economy with tariffs and mocked its sovereignty by calling on it to become the 51st state. It was this Trump factor that propelled a stunning turnaround for the Liberals, who just a few months ago had appeared dead in the water under Justin Trudeau’s leadership. Carney, with his experience as the governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, successfully presented himself as a calm and capable manager in times of crisis. But digging into the results, the narrative becomes more complicated. The Conservative Party put in a strong showing, increasing its vote share and seat count from the last election in 2021. Most surprisingly, the Conservatives flipped many seats in the manufacturing heartland of southern Ontario, home to Canada’s auto and steel industries. This region is under dire threat from Trump’s strategy to force factories to relocate to the US, and yet its voters largely backed Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Carney will likely fall just short of a parliamentary majority due to his underperformance here, and the Liberals will need to examine what went wrong. Even so, Poilievre’s future is deeply uncertain. Until recently he appeared likely to be Canada’s next prime minister, having prosecuted Trudeau’s management of the economy to devastating effect—especially as inflation took root after the Covid-19 pandemic and housing prices soared. But Poilievre was shockingly defeated in his own district on Monday, leaving him without a seat in Parliament. He will also come under heavy criticism for having blown what was once a dominant lead in the polls and failing to adapt to circumstances after Trump returned to office. The real test for Carney begins now. Throughout the campaign he explicitly promised to “win” a trade war with Trump and to deepen Canada’s economic ties with European and Asian allies. But Canada remains an export-driven economy that’s highly integrated with the US market. The road ahead will be difficult. The US has placed significant tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and auto imports, and Canada has levied retaliatory counter-tariffs on a wide range of American-made goods. Carney pledged that if he won the election, he would open comprehensive trade negotiations with Trump with the goal of getting all tariffs removed. Ideally for Canada, this would take the form of an updated North American free trade deal, similar to how things played out in Trump’s first term. Carney now has to translate his stump speeches into concrete action. Millions of Canadian workers will be anxiously watching the results. —Brian Platt Related from Bloomberg Opinion: Canada Just Got the Crisis Manager It Desperately Needed | 
