A blackout has brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill, affecting millions of people. The Spanish power distributor calls it “exceptional and extraordinary."

That conclusion has been supported by the operator of Spain’s national grid, Red Eléctrica, which has located where outages began on Monday. Two separate incidents of power outages led to instability in the grid leading to a “breakdown in interconnections with France,” leaving the Iberian grid isolated.

The hunt has begun for the cause of a massive blackout across Spain, Portugal and parts of France that halted trains, bank machines and traffic lights, in one of Europe's biggest ever power system collapses.