Playa de Palma restaurants demand answers after power cuts hit peak weekend

Playa de Palma's restaurants and bars spent one of the busiest weekends of the season fighting blackouts instead of serving guests. Between July 17 and 19, the seafront strip between Can Pastilla and Balneario 6 saw a string of voltage drops and outright power cuts, with two separate failures leaving around 2,000 customers without electricity, according to Última Hora.

For kitchens mid-service on Saturday 18 July, that meant extractor hoods, fryers, cold rooms and payment systems going dark all at once. Some businesses had to suspend service; others drastically reduced activity. Restauración Mallorca CAEB, the trade association representing the area's bars and restaurants, says the outages weren't a one-off. Businesses had already reported voltage drops and sporadic cuts the week before, pointing to a deeper problem with the local grid.

CAEB has pointed to Endesa, the utility that supplies the area, and is demanding a full, transparent account of what went wrong and what the company plans to do to stop it happening again, according to both Última Hora and the Majorca Daily Bulletin. The association, led by president Juan Miguel Ferrer, is now collecting documentation from affected businesses to weigh legal action over spoiled stock and lost trade during one of the busiest weekends of the season. Endesa has said crews are removing temporary generators used during the fix, and that residents and businesses may notice brief interruptions while the network reconnects.

Abone, the Balearic association representing leisure and entertainment venues, joined CAEB in raising the alarm, according to the Majorca Daily Bulletin. Neither outlet named individual restaurants affected; the outages ran along the Playa de Palma seafront from Can Pastilla to Balneario 6.