I got stranded on a train for 12 hours in the Spanish blackout. Here's what it taught me.

Everything is copy.

Sometimes I get premonitions.

Sudden and certain, they flood every fibre of my being with an inexplicable, yet unshakable feeling—that something, and maybe something bad, is going to happen.

The last one happened on a flight to Madrid, just over a week ago. As we waited for take off, I felt a cold, plunging sense of dread. So far, Ryanair had charged me 75 quid for an “oversized” cabin bag and the flight had been delayed by two hours (and Bristol airport doesn’t even have a Pret). But I sensed that there were worse things to come.

Other than paying extra close attention to the pre-flight safety instructions, I brushed my premonition aside. It was just nerves, I told myself. I’d plucked up the courage to tag some solo travelling onto the end of my trip, as a kind of test run to work up to bigger adventures.

As I wrote about here, it’s something I’ve had a bit of a block around. I used to travel by myself without a second thought. But for some reason—maybe the complacency of being in a relationship, or losing some of the fearlessness that defines youth—I kept putting it off.

Understandably, I was feeling apprehensive. But I’d be with a friend in Madrid for the next three days, before catching a train to meet my mum in Andalusia for the next four. I didn’t need to worry just yet.

The weekend passed in sunlit squares and barrel-filled bars, and on the Monday, I boarded a train to Jerez de la Frontera. A brief solo interlude before I met up with my mum, perhaps this would be a good way to ease me in. And I do love a long-distance train journey. So I settled into my seat, plugged my headphones in, and listened to podcasts. I contemplated a sleep, but I didn’t want to miss the Spanish countryside speeding past, all ochre fields and pueblos blancos.

I needn’t have worried, as I’d soon become very well acquainted with this scenery—and regret draining my phone battery with all of those podcasts. Because the difference between premonitions and passing anxiety is that premonitions come true…

It’s like going on your first solo holiday, and getting stranded on a train in the middle of a huge, international power cut

It is 12.33pm on Monday 28th April when our train grinds to an unceremonious halt somewhere between Cordoba and Seville. If I had to be precise, I’d say we are several kilometres into what my late father would term “the arse end of nowhere” (hereby referred to as AEON).

But trains stop all the time, right? There’s probably a signal failure, or we’re waiting for a platform to clear ahead of us. I patiently wait for an overhead announcement.

None comes. The engine is eerily silent. The air con has died.

1.03pm

According to my WhatsApp conversation with my boyfriend, this is when I start to panic. The train driver is walking from carriage to carriage, making some kind of announcement. When he arrives in ours, I catch electricidad and todo el pais, stopping him to check if my Spanish is just bad or if this is indeed the start of a Black Mirror episode. He can neither confirm nor deny the latter, but instructs me to wait while they try to glean further information.

I still have signal and my phone is on 60% battery. I switch it to low power mode and check the news, where reports of the unprecedented (what isn’t these days?) outage are breaking thick and fast. I live stream my heightening anxiety to my boyfriend, who tries to reassure me that it will get fixed soon and “could be an exciting adventure”. I switch off my phone to preserve battery.

2.04pm

The next hour passes in a state of steady and sweaty fretting. It is about 25 degrees outside and the train staff have instructed us to pull down the blinds to stay cool. I’m thirsty, but mindful of my limited water supply and keen to avoid another trip to the loo, in which I have just made my contribution to a rapidly-filling toilet basin.

My carriage seems to be made up of Spanish pensioners, who are exchanging tidbits from friends, family and news outlets up and down the country. They all seem remarkably calm. The woman next to me is placidly playing Candy Crush on one of her two iPhones (astonishingly, this is all she does for the next four hours—we all have our coping mechanisms). Most people are taking the opportunity to have a siesta. Several have gone up to the bar for cervezas.

Meanwhile, I fear for their bladders and catastrophise enough for all three hundred of us. As musings on cyber attacks and terrorism move through the train, I keep myself amused by imagining our increasingly doomed fates.

If the train manages to get moving again, will they take us to our final (!!) destinations? Or will I be abandoned in some unfamiliar, apocalyptic, Spanish city, searching the streets for my mum while feral crowds loot shops and aliens descend from the skies?

Will we be evacuated to a nearby village and taken in by pitying locals who’ve nothing but stale bread to feed us? Or will we stay put for days, eating Sevillian oranges and worms to survive?

If we are here overnight, will I have to cling to the Candy Crush lady to stay warm?

I need to get out of this train carriage.

2.22pm

The carriage doors have been opened to let in a mercifully cool breeze. People congregate in the corridors to take in the fresh air and admittedly idyllic landscape. Or have a fag and another cerveza (but won’t they need to wee???).

And then, hurrah!! As I hover next to that weird bit of the train that joins the carriages together (which terrified me as a child and kind of still does) salvation comes. A clunk and a whoosh, and the train whirs into action. The lights come on, the air con kicks in, and everyone cheers and claps. I hurry back to my seat and exchange a sigh of relief with the Candy Crush lady.

But no sooner have I sat down and excitedly text my boyfriend, than it cuts again. A false alarm.

By now, my mum has landed in Seville. She’s supposed to catch a different train to Jerez and has only heard about the power cut because I’ve messaged her—bizarrely, no one says a word about it on her flight. Outside the airport, it’s a different story. With the trains down, the taxi ranks are in chaos. Luckily, she has the nous (and the blessing of being bilingual) to get chatting to a couple of men, one of which tips off his mate that she needs to get to Jerez. For a sizeable fee, he agrees to take her.

2.23 - 4.21pm

It’s official: I am the train wreck.

As I kick myself for thinking I had the balls to catch a mere train alone, I try to remember everything I know about polyvagal theory, surreptitiously box breathing as the Spaniards snore and crack jokes around me. On top of the general excruciation of not knowing wtf is happening/my tattered nerves, I am also extremely self-conscious about my lack of chill. I refrain from any tapping exercises, lest I expose myself as the lily-livered millennial Englishwoman that I am.

When a kindly gentlemen across the aisle waves his power pack in my face, I almost burst into tears. But alas, it is incompatible with my iPhone. Thankfully, I have my journal.

An melodramatic excerpt from my journal:

It’s ironic that is the first time I have travelled alone for years. This is exactly what I was afraid of. If I was with [my boyfriend], I wouldn’t feel so anxious. Yes, I like to take charge in our domestic life. But travel is where I get to unburden myself of all mental load and happily (sumptuously!) take on the mantle of the weaker sex, outsourcing all navigation, administration and crisis management to him.

He is the one who books complex cross-country journeys, carries my bags, and tells the Thai bus driver when I need to stop for a wee [I know I seem obsessive, but I’m a hydrated gal, you know?]. And most importantly, calms me down when I am stressed. If he were here, he would remind me that there is only so much we can control, give me a hug, and distract me with a game of I Spy. Instead, I am all alone [cue violins].

4.30ish?

A tractor drives past, waving and asking if we need anything. A rasping old lady shouts out to him, cracking jokes and cackling so hard that she begins to cough. As my journal entry conveys, I am struggling to see the funny side.

My stomach is in knots and my left eye is twitching. Now surgically un-attached to my phone, I try to read my book, a collection of essays about rivers. But I can do little more than watch the words drift across the page.

I go and stand by the open door, willing myself to be soothed by the quiet, serene landscape—tall grass rippling in the wind, scattered wildflowers, a vast but neatly kept orange grove. I try to philosophise: who are we when we are unmoored like this? When the infrastructures we take for granted simply disappear? What do we become without the lifelines of working power sockets, flushing toilets, and reliable 5G?

Then I get distracted by needing to pee again.

5-6pm?

To prevent myself from losing my mind, I pace nervously up and down the train. There is no water, food or beer left in the catering car. Some steps have been attached to one of the cars, and people are getting out onto the tracks. I get chatting to a lovely Spanish woman, also travelling alone, whose gentle demeanour is a balm for my loneliness. We agree to brave the al fresco toilet.

Now let me tell you, it’s not easy to maintain much grace or dignity when you’re walking on train tracks—they are made up of steep, slippery slopes of rubble that will absolutely trip you up.

Nor is it easy, as a woman, to wee on the side of a train track. You must descend into a prickly, equally steep undergrowth while you try not to think about Lyme-disease-carrying ticks. You must somehow manage to do your business without flashing the entire train. But when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go.

Back on the train, the police have arrived to dole out bottles of water. One is wearing dreadfully tight, stonewashed jeans and bare ankles, which (like Nick Cave) would usually cause me a great deal of disquiet. But, alongside the downright heroic train staff, they exude calm and competence, patiently answering questions and checking if anyone needs to be taken to hospital.

It’s here that I should add that there are lots of elderly people, multiple pregnant women and young families aboard the train. I, a strong, healthy young woman, remain the most flustered. Probably because I am a) alone, b) not in my own country, and c) a stresspot.

I haven’t turned on my phone for hours now, conscious of what further “adventures” lay ahead. But not being able to talk to someone is pushing me to breaking point. If I don’t find company, I will cry. So I decide to bloody well do something about it and march up the train in search of anyone who speaks English.

I chance on a woman who’s reading a book with an English title; the man opposite her also has an English guidebook to Andalusia. We get talking and I learn that she and her brother are visiting from America. The man sitting behind them is Mexican and speaks perfect English. They are all just as clueless as I am, but we form an alliance, swapping whatever bits of information we have from the outside world.

The last time I’d looked at my phone, my mum had text to say there was power in Jerez and the trains would be running again at 6pm. Others were saying we could be here until midnight. And even if they did evacuate us, we were one of maybe a hundred trains stranded up and down the country. What would they do with all 35,000 of us?

Outside, dusk was beginning to fall.

6.16pm

I switch on my phone to text my boyfriend: Still nothing here xxx

This is the last time I have signal for the next four hours. Shortly after, we are told to get off the train. I’m standing up front with my new friends, so I rush back to my carriage to grab my bags. We forget the steps and simply jump down from the carriages. As the train driver puts out a hand to help me off, I ask what’s happening. He tells me we’ll be driven to a nearby service station, then buses will arrive to take us to our destinations: Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, and Cadiz.

My heart lifts. I meet up with my friends again in the queue for the five or so police cars that will drive us, in batches, to the service station. As golden hour hits the orange groves, I wonder if maybe it has all been an exciting adventure. The atmosphere is one of merriment and relief.

7pm?

We are dropped off at a nondescript service station. Still in the AEON, but they have a generator, which means working lights, power sockets, toilets, and a bar serving food and drink. I go to buy some water and snacks, but the shop can’t take card payments and I don’t have any cash. A man (who is unmistakably drunk) intercepts with a 50 euro note and heroically pays for me and the woman next to me, whom I think he fancies.

Fed, watered and charged, I go outside to wait. And wait.

9pm?

At around 9pm, it starts to get dark. And cold. There is still no sign of the buses and the train staff are as out of the loop as we are. Our only hope lies in the Guardia Civil, who have a radio.

I reconvene with the Mexican man and the American couple, who ask if we would split a taxi to Cadiz. We absolutely would—if we had any way of getting one. As I pull my denim jacket closer to me, I wonder if all three hundred of us would actually fit inside the service station. It doesn’t look good.

What happens next is nothing short of a miracle: a single taxi pulls into the services, its light distinctly on.

My American friend sprints at a pace that belies his seventy-something years, our Mexican friend hot on his tails. And boy, are we in luck—the taxi driver will take the four of us to Cadiz, and drop me off in Jerez on the way. He just needs to drop someone else off, then he’ll be back in five minutes to pick us up. He zooms off.

This is quite possibly the longest five minutes of my life—and not just because 5 minutes = 15 minutes in Spanish time.

While we anxiously await our ride, the train staff huddle us together for an update: the buses will not be coming, and instead a Spanish military truck will arrive to transport us to an undisclosed location—maybe Seville—from where we’ll have to figure shit out for ourselves. Which, considering the city is likely going to be full of similarly stranded passengers, seems like a terrible idea.

Someone murmurs a rumour that others are spending the night in sports halls. I am unsure from whence this intel came, seeing as we have zero connectivity with the outside world. But I think, sod that.

I’m not religious, but if there’s one advantage of having a dead dad, it’s having someone to watch over you, right? So for the umpteenth time that day, I pray.

A few minutes later, our taxi reappears.

11.20pm

A couple of hours later, I am deposited safe, if a little unsound, at my hotel in Jerez. We didn’t hit any phone signal until about 10.30pm, so my mum and my boyfriend (back in the UK) have been obsessively checking the news and fretting on the phone all evening.

Everything in the hotel is working as normal. Against its smooth marble floors and artfully positioned monsteras, I feel dusty and disheveled. But most of all, incredibly lucky.

Because what are the chances? That just after we floated the idea, a taxi showed up—like some kind of glorious mirage. That out of the three hundred people waiting there, we were the ones who lucked out. I felt guilty about this. But surprisingly, there was no Hunger Games-style competition for the taxi. The Spanish passengers remained unfazed, looking on with mild curiosity as we squashed ourselves and all our clobber into the car. They stepped gallantly aside as we sped off into the night, taking our lack of chill with us.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing

I’m writing this post from my apartment in Malaga, where I’ve been staying (alone!) for the past two days. With the gift of hindsight and the rest of my holiday under my belt, I’m able to look back with a bit more perspective—I may have let my mind go a bit too far with the alien invasion scenarios, and it could have been a lot worse. Some humour, even—because you’ve got to laugh. But mostly, disbelief—we’re all still processing that such a wide-scale outage could happen in the first place, and I’m still processing that I managed to get into that taxi.

I can’t deny that it’s got the ingredients of a good story.

But what’s the moral? Namely, never, ever, travel anywhere without:

• Full battery

• A power pack

• An extra phone (Candy Crush lady was a wise, wise woman)

• Enough food and water to feed the five thousand (or at least 300 train passengers)

• And maybe a portaloo for good measure

But also…

Sometimes, you just need to learn to trust yourself

Clearly, this international event was not about me and my silly little worries/solo jaunts. But it deepened my reflections (at least I got something out of it, hey?) on that topic of risk.

A couple of months ago, I was talking to my best friend about something I was worried would happen. Even though the chances were slim to none, I had built up so much anxiety, imagined so many scenarios of how it could play out, that the fiction had started to become fact.

As I relayed all of this to my friend, she said something that stuck with me: that ultimately, I didn’t know what would happen—but what I did know was that I could trust myself. She reminded me how much I had been through, and how much I had grown. She told me that whatever happened, I could handle it.

Taking risks is something that, naturally, fills us with various worries and anxieties. In today’s culture, I think we have a tendency to skate over these. We glorify risk-taking insofar as it relates to success: the founders who quit their job and started a unicorn, the person who left their relationship then found a better one, the woman who went solo travelling and found herself—stories where the risk “paid off”. We admire their confidence, their wilfulness, even their recklessness.

But in reality, we may take risks that don’t work out. Sometimes, our worst fears, our premonitions, will come true. The outcome is never guaranteed, either way.

What we can rely on is our capacity to navigate whatever unfolds.

We can have faith in our own resources: our intuition, resilience, and self-compassion. That’s not the same thing as confidence or certainty. It’s courage—which may feel small, but the more we lean into it, the more we learn it’s something we can count on. It’s trust—in ourselves and, if we’re lucky, the kindness of strangers.

What taught you to trust yourself? How does this change how you feel about risk?

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About me + Messy Work

I’m Lucia, a writer and coach based in Bristol, UK. I work with deep thinkers, big feelers and truth seekers who can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to life. And write about the messy (but beautiful!) work of figuring it all out.