Barcelona households face second day without power

BARCELONA, July 24 (Reuters) About 72,000 households and businesses faced a second day without electricity in Spain's second city Barcelona today and the power distributor said full repairs could take weeks after yesterday's chain of network fires.

Electricity returned to about 30,000 users during the night, when extra police patrolled darkened streets and angry residents bashed pots and pans in noisy protests.

Generator Endesa and distributor Red Electrica, which have avoided admitting blame, said they did not know when service would be completely restored after the huge blackout which cut power to 300,000 households yesterday.

''It could be some time, probably weeks more than days,'' before Barcelona's full power supply is back up power distributor Red Electrica's delegate for Catalonia, Luis Pinos, told Reuters.

Barcelona Mayor Jordi Hereu spoke to the presidents of both Endesa and Red Electrica to demand a quick solution.

''We can't allow a failure in the electricity network to affect the city's proper functioning. We demand that this be solved as quickly as possible,'' Hereu said.

The Spanish government has ordered an investigation into the faults and will publish consumers' rights on its web page, Industry Minister Joan Clos said.

Some traffic lights were still affected today, after yesterday's chaos on the roads following the accident started by a broken cable which set off a chain reaction of substation fires, the city of Barcelona said.

About 50 generators have been deployed at key users such as hospitals and more were on the way, an Endesa spokesman said.

Citizens of a city which prides itself on being one of Europe's cultural capitals seethed at the embarrassing infrastructure failure and businesses accused power companies of insufficient investment in the Catalonia region.

Reuters RJ GC2040