Telefónica: Major glitch causes widespread disruption in Spain with emergency lines down and business scrambling - is it impacting the UK?

Emergency numbers stopped working in several parts of Spain and businesses were scrambling. Telefónica, one of Spain’s biggest telecom providers, ran a network update that didn’t go to plan.

The update knocked out services for many of the company’s clients. The 112, the emergency number, stopped working in at least four autonomous communities.

In the Basque Country, for example, the local government had to jump on social media to tell people to call 900 112 088 instead, after they realised calls weren’t getting through to their emergency centre — and that the issue had likely been going on since 4 a.m.

By mid-morning, the situation was mostly back to normal in that region, but others weren’t so lucky. In Aragón, authorities shared not one but three alternative phone numbers that people could call in an emergency.

All over Spain, companies woke up to broken systems. Computers weren’t connecting, software wasn’t loading, some firms were practically frozen, with no access to the tools they needed to run their day.

A huge number of people rely on Telefónica every day, and they were left in the dark. A Telefónica spokesperson said “We have done some network upgrade work which has affected some companies' fixed communication services (voice and internet). We are working on resolving this and some of the affected services have already been recovered, such as the 112 emergency services, which have now been re-established.” The company stressed that the incident is not impacting the UK.