No panic but paella: a shift from perspective

One year ago, something happened here that everyone in Spain knows: el apagón; the black out.

On April 28 at 12.33h within seconds, electricity failed across nearly the entire Iberian Peninsula. More than 54 million people. All at once. Trains and elevators stopped. Internet went down.Traffic lights didn’t work.

And immediately, the speculations started. Cyberattack. Russia. Terrorism. Flashbacks to la pandemia.

After a few hours, we thought: maybe we should get some water. Tap water in Spain isn’t exactly a treat. So, off to the supermarket.

Madrid was chaos. But the shopping carts coming out in Denia weren’t filled with toilet paper or canned beans. But with paella rice. Stock. Vegetables. Chicken.

No electricity? No problem. The gas bottle comes out. Paellera on top. So we did as the Valencians do and turned on the barbecue. A neighbor with a transistor radio kept the whole urbanization updated via the communal garden.

Problem solved. With rice.

And in the evening, something even more beautiful happened.

Because there was no electricity anywhere, there was no light anywhere. No streetlights. No buildings. No distant city glow.

The whole country went dark.

And everyone went outside. To look at the stars.

I’ve never seen a sky like that.

Sometimes you only notice how obvious something iswhen it suddenly disappears.

Light, for example. We live in it, without seeing it. Until it’s gone.

Also perspective works like that.

The way you look at a situation feels logical. Familiar. The only way.

Until you’re somewhere people handle things very differently. And suddenly you think: oh. This is also possible.

The Valencians didn’t panic.They made paella.

That says something about how you look at problems. About what you consider normal. About the assumptions you carry without noticing.

Sometimes you need a blackout to see how much light there usually is. Sometimes you need another country to see there’s more than one way to deal with uncertainty. And sometimes it helps when someone else looks along with you.