Collective complaint on prolonged electricity cuts affecting families and children in Cañada Real, Madrid
The European Committee of Social Rights found that Spain had violated rights upheld in the European Social Charter in a case brought on behalf of people living without adequate access to energy in Cañada Real. Spain was found to be liable since it is a State’s responsibility to realize the rights in the Charter, and the government failed to remedy the situation and support the residents after the private company providing electricity halted their service in 2020.
In March 2022, five international non-governmental organizations jointly filed a complaint against Spain with the European Committee of Social Rights (“Committee”) because of power outages in Cañada Real Galiana (“Cañada Real”), a shantytown in Madrid. The outages began in October 2020, when the private electric company in charge of providing electricity, Unión Fenosa Distribución/Grupo Naturgy, cut the electricity to two sectors, impacting at least 4,500 people. Energy was permanently cut from one sector of Cañada Real (Sector 6) and has been accessible only on an intermittent basis in another sector (Sector 5).
The complainant organizations alleged breaches of Articles 11, 15, 16, 17, 20(a), 23, 27§1(a), 30 and 31 taken alone or in conjunction with Article E of the European Social Charter (“Charter”) implicating a lack of adequate housing and detriments to the health of all residents, to children’s development, to gender equality, to vulnerabilities of the elderly and those with disabilities, as well as an increase of social exclusion and poverty.
Despite the Spanish government justifying the energy cuts for safety reasons, the Committee accepted the complaint in October 2022 and ordered the Spanish government to adopt immediate measures for access to electricity and heating in Cañada Real because of the potential irreparable harms that could come from the power outages. While Spain submitted information on the immediate measures in December 2022, the information primarily combatted the need for immediate measures. Spain claimed that there would be a safety problem with ordering immediate access to the power supply, that Sector 5 had continuous and stable electricity and Sector 6 was using alternative sources of energy, and that any areas where electricity could not be reinstated were a part of a seven-to-fourteen-year-long rehousing plan with substantial financing.
In their final 2024 decision, the Committee established that safe, stable, and consistent access to adequate energy is a prerequisite and important component to fulfill the rights in the Charter. For energy conditions to be considered “adequate,” uphold the Charter and pass scrutiny by the Committee, they must satisfy a number of conditions, including affordability and sustainability. There are also several pieces of Spanish legislation that promise access to energy and to resolve the current outages, such as Article 96 of their constitution and a 2017 Regional Pact.
Using prior case law, the Committee found that Spain, the State itself, is responsible for upholding the rights in the Charter, including in instances like this one where they have neglected to remedy a situation they did not directly cause. While States can use private companies to meet their duty of social rights delivery, it is still the State’s responsibility to regulate and supervise private sector involvement, ensuring that rights are continuously realized and not undermined.
The Committee emphasized that the State’s responsibility to uphold the rights in the Charter needs to be conducted in a practical and effective form, creating an understanding that the rights are not simply theoretical ideas. Despite the complexity that may be involved in resolving the issue and restoring power, the State must meet the rights-based goals set out in the Charter within a reasonable time, with measurable progress, and by employing available resources to their fullest extent.
In analyzing Spain’s commitment to uphold the Charter, the Committee not only found that Spain failed to take the immediate measures they were ordered to in 2022, but that the State had also violated seven articles of the Charter since the power outages began. First, Spain failed to take adequate measures to remediate and ensure an adequate standard of housing – adequate housing must include heating and electricity under Article 31 because of its importance for maintaining livable temperatures, lighting, washing, cooking, and refrigeration. The lack of energy also poses sanitation, health, and safety risks, and the Spanish government did not take the appropriate measures to remove the causes of health hazards and protect against diseases and accidents caused by the power outages as required by Article 11; for example, illnesses such as the flu and COVID-19 were prolonged, and many people sustained injuries in their attempts to self-help and install and use alternative energy sources. Spain was also found to have failed to protect families using those same housing standards, and did not rely on the participation of civil organizations representing the families to address the situation as required under Article 16. The Committee discussed Spain’s violation of Article 17, where they relied on their analysis of Articles 31, 11, and 16 to show that Spain failed to protect children from the inadequacies of their living situations. There was also an emphasis on the failure to guarantee access to education as part of Article 17 § 2, since electricity is crucial for using devices to study, maintaining hygiene to attend class, and being able to virtually attend class during pandemic times. Other vulnerable populations that Spain failed to protect from the impacts of the power outages included the elderly (covered under Article 23) and those with disabilities (covered under Article 15); the specific considerations necessary to ensure adequate health, employment, and participation in order for each population to lead decent lives in the community were not accounted for. Finally, the Committee found that Spain had violated Article 30 and failed to protect the residents of Cañada Real from poverty and social exclusion. Energy poverty exists when a household cannot meet its domestic energy needs and had become a commonality in the area, exacerbating the preexisting poverty in the area and harming other basic rights; meanwhile, social exclusion had been increased due to stigmatization and discrimination in the public eye since residents were likened to criminals as reasoning for the power cuts and the government appeared to have abandoned them.
As Spain failed to follow the Committee’s 2022 order to immediately restore the power supply prior to their final decision, it is unclear whether Spain will enforce the final decision. So far, no competent authority has announced the implementation of any measures or the initiation of any process aimed at restoring power supply in the neighborhood. When questioned about the enforcement of the decision in the Madrid regional parliament, members of the regional government have merely referred to the relocation of residents and have denied that the decision has any binding effect.
The civic organization Plataforma Cívica Luz para la Cañada Real held a demonstration on April 6, 2025, in opposition of the Spanish government’s continued interministerial meetings on rehousing plans, calling the actions forced evictions and stating that the relocations are contrary to the ruling of the Committee. It is unclear whether the plans being met about currently are different in comparison to the seven-to-fourteen-year-long rehousing plan disapproved of by the Committee in the case. The organizations involved in both the complaint and calling attention to the issue continue their commitments to ensure that Spain complies with the Committee’s ruling and reinstates the electricity expeditiously.
The decision is groundbreaking in international human rights law terms due to its in-depth engagement with the relationship between human rights and access to energy. While there have been calls by various international committees and United Nations bodies to uplift the need for adequate energy as a right, the explicit connections that the European Committee of Social Rights was able to draw between energy and its crucial role in realizing collection of other social rights, not simply adequate housing, is powerful. There is only one previous decision by the Committee that condemned a State for a greater number of violations of the European Social Charter than those committed by Spain in this case.
This is also the first time a human rights body has declared that the people in Cañada Real have had their rights infringed in the four years since the power outages began. There has finally been acknowledgment by a governing body that there are means to remedy the situation in a practical manner with actionable steps, and that the government has the obligation to supply electricity, rather than allowing the responsibility to fall on private companies.
The reasoning used in this decision can help future groups and communities hold other States accountable to revitalize energy poor areas. The conceptual importance of adequate energy and State responsibility, alongside the means with which to realize those findings, will strengthen a foundation in international law supporting calls upon States to create and prioritize systems of sustainable energy for their communities.
