On April 28, 2025, a major blackout plunged large parts of Spain and Portugal into darkness, with rolling effects also felt in southern France. The disruption affected millions, halting trains, grounding flights, disabling telecommunications, and impacting hospitals and data centres.
This event has become a stark reminder for infrastructure managers, utilities, and facilities engineers across Europe: in a crisis, access to essential system information must be immediate, reliable, and independent of complex technologies.

At Silver Fox Limited, where our focus has always been delivering practical, time-saving labelling solutions for engineers, we believe these events highlight the urgent need to strengthen resilience planning. In particular, the role of simple, printed cable labels remains more important than ever.

Understanding the 2025 Iberian Blackout

The blackout was caused by a combination of factors, including extreme weather events, ageing grid infrastructure, and failures at critical nodes.
Despite robust emergency protocols, many sectors suffered extended downtime because the ability to trace, manage, and repair vital systems became more difficult without stable power.

Although most cable identification and asset management systems in the region still rely on traditional labelling, there is a growing adoption of RFID technology in modern infrastructure projects.
For those facilities that had integrated RFID systems into their operations, the blackout exposed a critical vulnerability.

What Happens to RFID Labels in a Country-Wide Power Cut?

To be clear:

• Handheld RFID readers may continue to function for some time using internal backup batteries.
• Passive RFID tags themselves do not require power and can still be scanned.

However, the real weakness lies not in the tags or scanners, but in the back-end systems.
RFID systems typically depend on:

• Network infrastructure to communicate with servers.
• Databases and cloud platforms to retrieve the detailed information associated with each tag.

In a widespread blackout:

• Local networks and Wi-Fi systems often fail.
• Databases and cloud servers can become inaccessible if data centres or communication links lose power.

Even if a tag is scanned successfully, critical information may not be retrievable.
Without access to networked databases, an RFID tag becomes just a serial number without any useful meaning.

For sites that had adopted RFID for cable management or critical asset tracking, the blackout would have made fault tracing slower, riskier, and more complicated.

Printed Cable Labels: Simple, Reliable, and Readable

Printed cable labels, such as those created with Silver Fox’s thermal printing solutions, offer a far more resilient and dependable alternative.

• Immediate Access:
  All necessary information is printed clearly on the label itself. No databases, networks, or electronic readers are required. A basic torch or flashlight is sufficient.
• Durable Under Stress:
  High-quality thermal labels are built to withstand heat, moisture, abrasion, and chemical exposure, maintaining legibility during emergencies.
• Minimised Error Risk:
  Clear, structured information helps engineers quickly and safely identify circuits and trace faults.
• Independent Resilience:
  Once in place, printed labels operate without any reliance on external systems or technologies.

In short, simple printed labelling offers a permanent layer of operational resilience that remains available when all else fails.

Why Resilient Labelling Should Be a Critical Priority

At Silver Fox, our guiding principle is simple:
"Your infrastructure is only as resilient as your ability to understand and repair it during a crisis."

While RFID and other digital systems provide efficiency benefits during normal conditions, major incidents like the 2025 blackout prove that infrastructure resilience depends on having clear, immediately accessible information at the point of need.

Printed cable labels offer a true failsafe, helping ensure quicker recovery, safer interventions, and lower operational risk during power outages or network failures.

How Silver Fox Supports Critical Infrastructure Resilience

With more than 45 years of experience supporting infrastructure sectors worldwide, Silver Fox specialises in labelling solutions built for harsh and unpredictable environments.

• Our Fox-in-a-Box® thermal printing solutions empower engineers to create durable, professional-grade labels quickly and efficiently.
• Our Labacus Innovator® software streamlines label creation with error-reducing features.
• All products are rigorously tested for durability and made in the UK, trusted across industries including energy, mass transit, telecoms, and industrial engineering.

Our mission is simple:
Save engineers time, eliminate avoidable errors, and enable resilience under pressure.

Conclusion: Building Real-World Resilience

The 2025 blackout across Spain and Portugal reinforced an important lesson.
Complex systems can fail during major emergencies. When they do, the simplest and most reliable tools are often the most valuable.

While RFID technology has its place in modern asset management, printed cable labels provide a critical foundation of resilience.
They require no power, no networks, and no additional infrastructure to deliver vital information exactly when it is needed most.

At Silver Fox, we are proud to stand behind engineers and operators who keep infrastructure running during the most difficult conditions.
Clear labelling, practical solutions, and real-world resilience are not luxuries. They are necessities.