I’m a Digital Nomad traveling through Spain and Portugal during the country wide power outages.
By Michael Snow
It was noon on another beautiful day on the Iberian Peninsula right before the world ended. My family recently got approved for a Digital Nomad Visa in Spain, and we decided to meet up with some friends in Portugal for some surfing, skating, and sandy beaches. We spent the weekend camping near the iconic big wave spot Nazaré, and we were driving back to one of our favorite beach towns on the coast, Ericeira, when it began.
We had caravanned in two cars with my brother, sister, and mother-in-law, our car singing along to the kids’ favorite songs, Alicia Keys’ seminal “Girl on Fire” for my son and Rose Betts’ “Irish Eyes” for my very not Irish daughter, on repeat for an hour, intermixed with “Peppa Pig”, or “Peppa Wurtz” in German, which we are practicing so they can better understand their Austrian family members. Don’t judge, it’s cheaper than Duolingo.
Halfway through the drive, the other car told us they needed to pull off for some gas, and they would catch up, but soon after we received messages that several stations were closed, and the only open one had massive lines. A quick Google search told my wife that there was due to be a price surge the coming week, and we dismissed it as bad luck, much more concerned with the diminishing signal service that was interrupting our backseat entertainment.
Arriving at our rental house, we saw that the power was out, and after flipping the breakers, we attempted to contact the owner as well as our family, who were still not back or responding to messages. It was only when two delivery men stopped by to drop off something for the house that we heard that the power was out for the whole area, and after some failed attempts to Google translate, we worked out that the blackout was potentially for the whole country. A neighbor came out to say it was for several countries; he blamed the Russians.
A familiar tickle, a whisper on the back of my brain, started to kick in, but I swiped it away and decided it might be good to run by the gas station to fill up the car. I told my wife, who was playing with the kids in the dimly lit house, the electric blackout shades still half down in the living room, unable to move.
I drove by two stations in town, which were both closed, and then swung by the local grocery store, which was filled with people buying water and food staples. I stood staring for a moment. That familiar feeling bringing me back to 2020 and the start of the pandemic, was no longer a tickle; it had risen to an audible voice talking over the clamor of the crowded store. An urge to hoard toilet paper rose within me. I realized I couldn’t call or text anyone, and I hadn’t mentioned coming to the store, which would take at least an hour just to stand in line. So I drove back to the house, just to tell my wife I was going back to the store. We still had no idea where the rest of our family was, it had been over an hour since they should have been back.
The general word on the street was at least a couple days of power being gone, so I bought huge jugs of water, not sure if the taps would run out, fruit, nuts, things that wouldn’t need any preparation. Sporadic service left people even more nose-deep in their phones as they frantically tried to contact loved ones, search for information, and voraciously scroll social media before a full blackout cut them off for an uncertain future. Another voice started to creep up, even louder than the COVID one.
I dropped out of art school as a freshman to follow my career as a professional freerunner. As a parkour athlete and stuntman, I ended up tied to the early 2000’s fascination with the zombies. Already a Romero aficionado along with my “down with the system” angst-ridden attitude, that world felt somehow attractive. I worked at a CrossFit gym voted 2nd best place in Washington, DC to go during a zombie apocalypse (the winner was a gun shop), my team appeared in countless zombie films and projects either running from or as the infected, and I consumed endless Walking Dead comics, Dead Rising video games, and spent what little money I had left at REI on outdoor survival gear that mostly looked cool even if I barely knew how to use it. This voice did not say: “It’s okay, stay at home, watch the news, it’s all going to be alright.” This voice said: “This is the beginning…are you ready?”
Back at the house, the rest of our family had arrived having also stopped at a grocery store but without the information we had, they had mostly purchased perishables like meat and milk, which we quickly shoved in the fridge, filled with ice to serve as an oversized cooler. We gathered round the kitchen table to strategize. We pooled our intel. Some people were saying 3-4 days, but some towns were okay. Some said 2-3 days, but it was all of Europe. My mother-in-law thought it might be North Korea. We pondered how we would get the kids to bed without our AC and sound machines, how to tell our remote clients in the US we were unavailable, and if we needed to duct tape a kitchen knife to a broomstick so we could defend ourselves and hunt for food. But by the end of the day, everyone was tired, the kids went to sleep easily, the house quiet and cool with the breeze coming off the ocean.
My brother and I sat outside with two of our last cold beers and watched the sun go down. We pondered the state of the world. All we knew was from the people we had spoken to, the delivery guys, our neighbors, the people at the grocery store. We envisioned how big cities were handling things. We reveled in the freedom of a world without electricity. I looked out across the neighborhood, usually empty at this time of night. People were outside grilling on their decks. Windows flickered like the candles that lit them inside. Shutters open to let in the air replaced the hum of AC units with voices of people speaking to each other instead of their screens.
In this moment we were actually privileged to be free of our electronics, offline like a weekend retreat, our glamping experience merely extended by a day. The reality is that around the world people were experiencing this every day and depending on their circumstances it had vastly different consequences. For some no electricity meant no food or water, no internet meant no contact to the outside world, no phones meant no ability to call for help, no power meant danger in the darkness. For them it’s not a z-day fantasy fun camp, it’s life and death, it’s reality and there’s no end in sight. We were lucky to be here, to have each other.
My wife had told me early on in our relationship if the world was ending she wasn’t going to stick around for a fight. She liked our life the way it was and the world she saw in those movies and games held no appeal for her. But talking to her as I joked the power would probably come back on tomorrow…or never, she said well that’s not ideal. We have kids now, we can’t give up. If we’re going to survive the apocalypse we need a gas stove because this induction one is worthless. I looked at her, held her in my arms and smiled. So much in our life has changed the last few years, and in this moment we actually were confronted with that evolution. We still have no idea what’s coming but at least we are going to face it together.
When our kids got us up around 5:30 a.m., their internal clocks requiring no electricity, my wife noticed a little light up on the wall that we usually have to cover with tape was shining like a little beacon of a life we already thought was gone. A quick scan of our phones confirmed that we were back online. Less than 24 hours later, and the world was back in its groove again. So I sit here now, on my laptop, typing away with the AC on, a belly full from a home-cooked meal, streetlights lighting up the road outside, in a quiet, shuttered neighborhood. I am grateful for all these things, these conveniences that make my life as a “digital nomad” possible, and yet that voice in the back of my head, while it has quieted again to a dull whisper in the cold Atlantic winds, still wonders: