What a twenty-one-hour outage taught me about panic
And why modern "connection" produces disconnection
It was a beautiful day in April this year. My wife, kids, and I had breakfast in Almería and ordered tostadas with cheese, avocado, and tomato. The kids had olive oil on theirs. My wife and I enjoyed a café con leche and a cortado, and the kids had orange juice. Then we ended our morning at Mercadona to grab a few groceries for a picnic the next day at the beach next to Iglesia Cabo de Gata.
As the grocer was ringing up our food, I knew something was off. The conveyor belt froze. The lights stayed on, but the grocer said something wasn’t working with the power.
When we stepped outside, we walked straight into the historic outage across Europe, known as the 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout. A voltage surge had knocked out electricity across Spain and Portugal. We didn’t know it then because we had no connection to the outside world. No cellphone service. No Wi-Fi. Just our eyes and ears.
As we headed toward our apartment, employees stood in the doorframes of their shops. Waiters leaned against walls, watching the street. The traffic moved cautiously, inventing its own rules without functioning streetlights.
The only thing left to do was buy ice cream for the kids with cash. I hoped for a discount, since everything was melting. But we paid full price for ice cream that was already sinking into the night.
Back home, we opened the balcony doors to watch the slow-moving crowds and enjoy the view of Santuario de la Virgen del Mar.
The outage lasted hours for some, and far longer for others. We waited twenty-one hours, much longer than most in the country. What stayed with me was not the outage but how people reacted.
I didn’t react with the same steady calm I saw around me. Something in me panicked. It wasn’t dramatic panic, but it was real. I turned off all our battery-powered devices, checked our water, and scanned the apartment for anything we might need if things got worse.
Outside, a small line had formed for water. People took a single jug, maybe two, and walked off unbothered. Their quiet, measured response startled me. It made my own instinct to brace for disaster feel automatic, almost learned. By the morning, I relaxed into the outage the way everyone else already had. I even enjoyed the slowness of it. But I regretted the time I lost at the start, the hours I spent preparing for a crisis that never came.
I grew up in South Florida, so outages were part of life.
During Frances and Wilma, two back-to-back hurricanes, we were without electricity for a couple of weeks. We used small generators and car batteries. Friends and family gathered in one place to play board games and pass the time together. But we always had days to prepare.
Before a storm, we stocked propane, bought drinking water, filled tubs, cleared yards, charged batteries, and checked every possible box. Preparation gave us comfort.
But what happens when you cannot prepare? These moments show something raw and unfiltered about us, revealing how people respond when disruption arrives without warning.
Unexpected disconnection does not create chaos. It reveals the culture we already live in.
When connection goes dark
During hurricanes, there are usually three kinds of people.
The careless: the overconfident residents who prepare little and assume they can take on any storm until it is too late.
The preparer: the steady planners who gather what they need to be comfortable for two weeks.
The anxious: the ones who overprepare, argue, and spiral into panic.
All three show up every year.
Mixed together, they create predictable chaos. But culture and environment shape this response. Chaos during disconnection is not universal. In Spain, I saw something very different.
There was no storm or imminent danger. But the uncertainty alone would create concern back home. In Florida, even a short outage fills Facebook groups within minutes. A little longer, and you see gas lines forming.
In Almería, people kept eating and walking. Hours later, deep into the night, families sat in plazas and bars. In the morning, there was still no power, yet life continued. Schools closed, some businesses shut down, but the pace of daily life remained calm. Across the country, social media praised how well Spain handled the blackout. The contrast was stark: one culture rushes to solve problems that have not fully formed. The other pauses, breathes, and accepts the moment as it comes.
Much of this starts long before any disruption.
The day before the outage, I watched the courtyard of a café. Out of all the tables, only one couple, tourists, had their phones out. Everyone else was fully present with their conversations, tostadas, and drinks.
Maybe that is the difference. One culture practices distraction without noticing. The other practices presence without trying. When the lights go out, those patterns show themselves.
When connection creates disconnection
The internet offers incredible things. We can communicate with people far away, discover communities, and learn anything. But somewhere along the way, digital connection shifted from an alternative to our primary way of relating to each other.
Don DeLillo’s novella The Silence follows five people on Super Bowl Sunday when every digital device suddenly shuts down. He never explains the cause. Instead, he examines how quickly language, habits, and identity begin to unravel when technology goes quiet.
He writes one chilling sentence:
“What happens to people who live inside their phones?”
When I compare the reactions of two cultures, in two different circumstances, much of the difference comes down to where we actually live our lives.
Technology can separate us from what is real. But underneath every tweet, ping, and message is a desire for connection. Once we understand that desire, we can shift the balance toward physical experiences again.
Relearning presence
Recently, I have put more weight on physical experiences. I have been playing more board games, like Catan, with friends and family. We forget our phones exist and spend two hours trading, conquering, and laughing.
I have taken the kids to more outdoor events and parks. We met family at a resort in Orlando, visited new parks, and walked more.
I have also made an effort to spark small conversations in coffee shops, supermarkets, and other public spaces.
After a few days of this, my anxiety levels dropped and I enjoyed my days more.
These experiences reminded me that digital connections are good substitutes, but they are not the main thing. With an 80/20 balance, we can keep most of our life rooted in the physical world and let the digital fill in the gaps. Like grounding in a psychological sense, this becomes a simple foundation for choosing the things that bring more happiness and meaning into our days.
Maybe real connection only reveals itself when the digital world finally goes quiet.