In the Madrid power cuts, I saw patience and common sense – but we were woefully unprepared | María Ramírez

People queued calmly for torches and shared radios, but our vulnerability in an internet-reliant world was badly exposed

At the entrance to a healthcare centre on Trafalgar Street, in my densely populated, central Madrid neighbourhood, somebody had stuck a sign: We ask for patience and common sense." The door was half open as doctors and nurses calmly tended to emergencies inside.

Patience and common sense is a very good way to describe what I witnessed in Madrid throughout the big blackout. We had no light, no power, no phone signal, not even water in some apartment buildings.