A Telefónica network update crashed its own network — and Spain's 112 with it

On 20 May 2025 services across Spain's mobile and fixed networks went down when Telefónica — the country's largest telecom operator — ran maintenance work to update its network. The update failed in a way that took down connections for both Telefónica customers and, because of the way Spanish operators interconnect, people on other networks too: callers could not make calls, receive texts or reach their mobile data.

The most serious casualty was the 112 emergency number. In several regions the service was disrupted, forcing emergency operators to publish alternative numbers and tell the public how to reach help another way. Telefónica said crews were working to restore service and that the emergency lines were back online, but the outage had already shown how a single operator's routine change could reach into life-and-death infrastructure.

The failure landed barely three weeks after a catastrophic nationwide power blackout on 28 April 2025 that blacked out much of Spain and Portugal for hours, and which had itself exposed how fragile the country's communications had become. That April event was a separate cause — a grid failure — but together they made May 2025 a brutal stretch for a network that Spain depends on for everything from commerce to emergency calls.