The first sign of trouble that Peter Hughes noticed was that his train to Madrid began to slow down.

Then the TV monitor and lights go out. The emergency lights were turned on, but did not continue, and the locomotive ground stopped.

Four hours later, Mr. Hughes is still trapped on a train 200 kilometers (124 miles) outside the Spanish capital. He had food and water, but the toilet was not working.

“It will get dark very quickly and we may be stuck here for hours,” he told the BBC.

Starting around local time (10:00 GMT), Mr. Hughes’ huge cuts stranded Mr. Hughes into trouble, causing chaos throughout Spain and Portugal, and affecting Andorra and parts of France.

Traffic lights are turned off. The city is closed. Businesses are closed and people join the queue to get cash because card payments are invalid.

Jonathan Emery bumps into a train between Seville and Madrid.

For an hour, he sat on the train and the door closed until people could pry them open for ventilation. Half an hour later, the passenger left, but found himself in trouble.

At that time, people from local villages began to come and fall supplies – water, bread, fruit.

“No one charges anything and the local towns must be walking around the locals because people are coming all the time,” he said.

In Madrid, Hannah Lowney scans half of grocery shopping at Aldi as electricity goes out.

In a voice message sent to BBC Radio 5 Live, Ms. Lowney said people came out of the office because they couldn’t tell when the bus was coming because they couldn’t tell when the bus was coming.

“It’s a bit disturbing that the whole country is, I’ve never experienced it before,” she said.

Mark England had lunch in the hotel restaurant when “everything went out, the fire alarm started to go out, the fire door started to close”.

Teacher Emily Thorowgood said that at an international school in Lisbon, electricity flashed for a while and then gave up.

She said she has been teaching in the dark, energetic children, but many parents are taking their children out of school.

Will David, a British man living in Lisbon, cut his hair and beard decoration in his barber’s basement when power is lowered. The barber found his place next to the upstairs window and completed the incision with scissors.

“It feels very strange to walk home, both the lack of traffic lights, which means that vehicles and pedestrians on the road are completely free, and many people who have nothing to do outside their workplaces,” he said.

Initially, the mobile phone network also dropped a little, and many people scrambled to get information.

Curtis Gladden of La Vall d’Uixo, about 30 miles from Valencia, said it was “terrible” because he struggled to understand what was going on.

Eloise Edgington can’t do any work as a contributor in Barcelona.

An hour and a half after the electricity went out, a Fortuna resident in southeast Spain said her husband was driving to try to find a gas station that could provide fuel to run the generator and keep the refrigerator powered.

“We are worried about food, water, cash and gas in case of a few days,” Leslie said.

She said locals “have more worries” than the suspended Madrid Open Tennis Championships.

Mr England said walking along the streets of Benidorm, “most of the shops are in the dark and are closed, or someone says at the entrance that you can’t come in. There are no cash machines, no traffic lights, so that’s weird.”

After Mr. Gladen’s phone signal returned about two hours later, he and the others ventured to the cafe, but found that “nothing worked – we came to have some food and drinks, but without electricity, they couldn’t cook.”

Within two hours, Spanish grid operator Red Electrica said it began to reclaim power in the north and south of the country.

But two and a half hours after the cut, Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida still urged all residents to “keep their moves to an absolute minimum, and if possible, leave them in the video of the city.”

At 15:00 local time, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez held an “extraordinary” meeting of the Spanish National Security Council.

Red Electrica CEO Eduardo Prieto said in a press conference shortly after that it could take “six to ten hours” to restore power.

Just before 16:00, the electricity bounced back in Malaga. By 17:00, the grid operator said, “In several areas of the north, south and west of the (Iberian) Peninsula, power is being restored.”

Portugal’s power company Ren has given a more terrifying prediction, saying it could “take up to a week” before the network returns to normal.

The knock effect continues: The airport’s backup generator starts, causing most flights to leave on time, but some flights are unable to operate.

Tom McGilloway will return to London on Monday night while on vacation in Lisbon, but as of the evening there is no idea what will happen.

He said it was people drinking and food for the time being – but the supplier told him they could only continue working until the battery ran out of payment terminal.

He added: “If the plane needs to be cancelled, I need to book a hotel and if the payment is lower, I don’t know what to do.”

“My partner’s parents are trying to buy gas so they can pick us up and take us back to Alentejo, but many gas stations are closed or not paid. We may be in a difficult situation with no plans to stay tonight.”

Other reports and studies by Andrey Massiah, Kris Bramwell, James Kelly, Bernadette McCague, Josh Parry and Naga Munchetty