SPAIN: Strike in the Darkness

From the operating theater in Madrid's Lourdes Hospital came an urgent cry: "Quick, bring candles!" The power had failed, the lights were out, and a surgeon, halfway through a cancer operation one night last week, was left in total darkness. On Madrid's Gran Via, the Spanish capital's Broadway, neon-lit theaters darkened, shop windows went black. Stumbling through the darkness, MadrileƱos cursed the latest and worst of a series of major cuts in the city's electricity supply. It was the same throughout most of Spain. A season of parching droughts had left the reservoirs empty. The hydroelectric power plants are old....

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