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Food by candlelight and no showers at Madrid Open

The Island

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April 30, 2025

Mirra Andreeva had just stepped up to the baseline to serve for a place in the Madrid Open quarter-finals when the power went out.

Food by candlelight and no showers at Madrid Open

A sweeping outage left millions in Spain, Portugal and parts of France without power, causing chaos across many regions.

At the Spanish tennis tournament, the electronic line-calling system went down, with players and the chair umpire left to call the lines, while the scoreboards also went dark.

On the main court, where Britain's Jacob Fearnley was about to serve to stay in the match against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, the 'spider cam' that hovers above court stopped right in the players’ eyeline, preventing them from serving.

Russia's Andreeva served out victory but admitted afterwards it wasn't easy, saying: "It was 15-40 on my serve and I was like, Oh, Mirra, just please, please do everything in your power to just take this game and finish this match."

Across Spain, traffic lights went out and trains stopped running, with

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