40 Hours Without Network: Alaró Demands Answers After Outage

Alaró over the weekend: 40 hours without phone and internet

What sounds like a worst‑case scenario in other places became reality in Alaró last weekend: from Friday night until Sunday morning large parts of the roughly 8,000‑inhabitant town were almost completely without phone network and internet. In the cafés on the Plaça Major the espresso machines were humming, but the card readers remained silent. The corner bakery accepted cash again, and in the narrow streets you heard more conversations than usual – probably also because WhatsApp was silent.

The key question: How robust is Mallorca's digital infrastructure really?

The central question now everyone is asking: How resilient are our networks on the island if a failure at the main backbone provider apparently paralyses large parts of a town? Alaró's town hall has officially reported the incident to the Balearic government and urged citizens to file their own complaints with the provider. That is intended to show how extensive the damage really is – and to build pressure.

More than just an annoying inconvenience

In daily life the outage meant far more than no streaming in the evening: craft businesses could not confirm orders by message, doctor's practices had problems with online appointments, delivery services risked missing time slots. Particularly vulnerable were people who rely on telemedicine, smart home devices or online banking. Reports that some affected people even experienced delayed emergency calls make the situation explosive and show that it is about more than lost sales data.

What is little discussed is that the technical topology – that is whether an area is supplied by several independent lines or depends on a single axis – is decisive. Here a single point of failure was revealed: Movistar acts as a backbone for several providers on Mallorca. If this partner fails, many fall with it.

What the municipality demands – and what else is possible

The town hall demands transparency, compensation schemes for particularly affected businesses and technical measures so that this does not happen again. These are concrete demands, but it is not enough to just wait for an investigation. The municipality should now also make public what supply and emergency plans it itself has: Are there alternative routing paths? Are there contracts that require redundancies? And what role does the regional regulator play?

Aspects that have so far barely been discussed

A few less highlighted points: firstly the economic follow‑on costs for small businesses – a weekend without card payments and order confirmations quickly adds up. Secondly the question of contract design between municipalities and network providers: what compensation payments are foreseen? Thirdly the social dimension: older people or chronically ill who rely on telemedicine or alarm services need special protective measures.

Concrete steps — what should happen now

For the municipality: Short term: publish a public log with a timeline, affected areas and communication attempts. Medium term: review contracts, demand redundancy requirements and plan emergency routes together with neighbouring municipalities. Long term: consider setting up municipal, freely accessible hotspots in central squares and a technical backup for critical services (e.g. satellite fallback for administration and medical emergency communication).

For businesses: Document incidents in writing, collect lost revenue and date/time information, file complaints with the provider – the more individual reports there are, the greater the chance of compensation.

For residents: Rethink home emergency plans: keep cash available, have alternative contact methods (phone numbers on paper) ready and organise neighbourhood help. The Plaça Major has shown in such moments again how important personal encounters are – but one should not have to rely on that.

What the authorities must deliver now

The Balearic government is examining the incident; sanctions are possible, but there is no quick fix. What is decisive is that regional authorities formulate binding requirements for redundancy and resilience and monitor their compliance. EU and national funding for infrastructure expansion could also be used to strengthen island‑wide resilience.

The scene on Sunday was twofold: on the one hand anger at the lack of information and the economic consequences, on the other the unusual quiet in the streets – no continuous news stream, instead conversations and the church bells. That may sound nostalgic, but it does not change the fact: a town that does not want to be offline for 40 hours again must act now. And the most important question remains: who will bear the costs – the operator, the regulator, or in the end the citizens?