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 widespread power outage hit Spain and Portugal, affecting millions of people who live across Europe's Iberian Peninsula.