Well, Quite A Day!

The scenes of citizens in the street swirling around a transistor have been repeated in cities like Madrid and Barcelona. In different parts of Spain, people have waited long queues to buy battery-powered radios to stay informed during the blackout. A group of people concentrate on a side of a central square in Madrid hours after the blackout. People around them come and go, crowd in the bus stops or make long queues to buy canned food; but they…

The blackout that surprised the vast majority of the country yesterday not only interrupted the power supply: it tested our technological dependence. Without networks, without light and without connection, the portable radio, powered by batteries, became the only link to the outside. A silent but forceful lesson, about the importance of preserving the essential in times where the digital seems to dominate everything. In a matter of minutes, elec…

Well, Quite A Day!

Obviously, we were unable to publish anything on the nationwide outage but we were able to follow what was happening on a good-old fashion transistor radio. The post Well, Quite A Day! first appeared on Costa Tropical Gazette News.

The blackout, which in some neighborhoods of Madrid lasted for more than 11 hours, turned the simplest object into the most precious: the transistor. This small radio device barely stays in the homes. Over the years it has seen technological advances move it to become relics. But this Monday, for hours, it has become for many people the only way to inform themselves. Hence, in many stores they have been exhausted as the hours passed and the hope…