Monday 28th April will go down as a day to remember for all the wrong reasons!  It was the worst power cut in the history of Spain with a situation "cero" where for some time the whole country was reduced to zero supply!  At first we still had 5G and could use our mobile phones to send and receive messages, but soon even that became impossible and all the phone lines were down too.  It led to chaos, especially in the big cities where the traffic (without the help of traffic lights) became grid-locked, passengers were stuck on some trains, and people had to be rescued from lifts.  Fortunately only about 5% of flights had to be cancelled, and hospitals were able to maintain essential services thanks to back-up generators.

It´s still not certain what caused it, but the latest reports are ruling out cyber-attacks.  The only way to get news at one point was by listening to Spanish radio in your car (or if you had an old-fashioned battery-powered radio, you could also find out the latest updates).  But it was a stark reminder of how reliant we are on modern technology, and how soon things can change in emergencies like this.

Luckily for me, the sun was shining and my camera had a full set of batteries so I was able to take photographs of a couple of the houses we have coming onto the market very soon (we are going through a purple patch with new listings coming on board, so watch this space!)

Back to normal today and the weather is set to improve too, so onwards and upwards!!

Weather permitting (and it looks like the rain has eased off for now), Semana Santa (Easter week) is about to start all over the world, but the celebrations in Spain are renowned for being an incredible spectacle.  Thousands and thousands of people take part in the larger cities where you might even have to pay to be able to line the streets to watch the processions.  But in our home town of San Miguel de Salinas, it´s a lot easier to get closer to the action, and if you are a keen photographer like myself it´s a wonderful opportunity to record these special events.  In San Miguel, the processions are no less impressive, in fact even more so for the size of the town, and so if you live nearby you shouldn´t miss the opportunity to witness at least one or two of the parades.

As I write, the Palm Sunday procession is just over an hour from starting, and I´m about to get my camera ready to make sure I can get some images to show the people that aren´t able to be here, for example those with holiday homes that are in their own countries right now.  I often publish these on our Facebook community forum (www.facebook.com/groups/sanmiguelgroup), and everyone else is welcome to upload their own images there too.