A dark adventure

Sunday night, April 27. We checked in at the Radisson Blu 1882 Barcelona Sagrada Familia. A friendly receptionist handed us the key card and a city map. My daughter looked mockingly. 'What should we do with that prehistoric thing?'

Around noon the next day, the power went out, not only in Barcelona, but across Spain, Portugal and parts of France.
What happened then was incredible and bizarre.

Nothing at first, power can go out anywhere at times, so you wait quietly until everything flashes back on.

After half an hour, sirens bellowed, emergency services rushed out to free people from subways and lifts. Glass lift booths at the entrance of metro stations transformed into hothouses, people banging hysterically on the windows.

After an hour, panic broke out. What was the cause? No one knew. Speculation abounded. Cyberattack? War? No coverage, the network was down. All I saw was people with mobiles in their hands, nervously peering.

Restaurants, tapas bars, shops and supermarkets closed their doors en masse. I saw people hanging from shutters to close their business. Digital payments were no longer possible. And who has cash in their pocket these days? Taxis, Ubers, Bolts. They no longer drove. Their navigation and payment systems no longer worked.

The hours passed and we decided to go back to the hotel. But how? I conjured the city map from my bag. Daughter looked mortified.

It was getting dark, sirens kept bellowing. A few shops were still open with some candles next to the cash register, cash only. A large Mercadona near our hotel was operating on an emergency generator. All of Barcelona was running out. There was massive hoarding. People were leaving the shop like pack mules. Shelves emptied in no time. We bought a roll of cake from my last shiny euros.

At our hotel, the emergency generator boomed (and that was certainly not true of all hotels) and powered the lobby, reception and restaurant. We could eat some food and charge our phones. Sometimes we even had coverage. Outside, it became pitch-dark and dangerous.

The still-lit lobby filled up and we got talking to all sorts of other guests with whom, in a normal situation, we in all probability would not have exchanged a stupid word.

In the room, the daily deadly rituals like brushing teeth had to be done by touch. The lights didn't have to go out, they already were. More than 14 hours later, halfway through the night, the power came back on.

The realisation of how we are today being lived digitised and made dependent on our mobile phone dawned on us at lightning speed.

Power off, consciousness on.
It's time to wake up...

This true story is based on the experiences of Marianne Kuiper and her daughter Fauve Eman