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Amazon's cloud services ran into problems on Monday and caused widespread disruption globally, affecting everything from social media and video streaming to banking and payment systems, including Spain's Bizum and ATM networks.

 

The outage began at around 9.00am Central European Time when Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant problem at one of its main data centres in Northern Virginia, USA, which affected a key part of its cloud system that stores and manages large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. This key part, called DynamoDB, is essential for many online services to run smoothly.

 

When this system went wrong, it caused a chain reaction of outages and slowdowns across numerous websites, apps, and digital services that rely on AWS's cloud infrastructure. Users quickly reported problems with household names like Alexa, Prime Video, Snapchat.

 

In Spain, the impact was particularly acute in financial and telecom services. Major banks including BBVA, CaixaBank, Santander and ING faced outages in their online platforms. Payment platforms like Bizum and Ticketmaster struggled with processing payments, while many ATMs and card terminals failed to function properly, leaving supermarket and other retail customers unable to make card purchases. Telecom companies such as Movistar, Orange, and Vodafone also reported disruptions affecting some digital services.

 

Amazon worked intensively to resolve the issue, confirming that the root cause was “fixed” by shortly after 1.30pm Spanish time, about four and a half hours after the incident began. Although services were gradually restored, recovery was slow and some areas remained unstable for hours.

 

The outage highlighted how deeply reliant the digital world has become on cloud infrastructure and illustrated the domino effect that a single failure can have across multiple sectors, from entertainment to banking and everyday payments. Amazon engineers promised to continue monitoring and improving system resilience to avoid such widespread disruptions in the future.

 

While order is returning to normal, the incident serves as a reminder of the cloud’s critical but vulnerable role in modern life. Users and businesses affected were urged to be patient as full restoration took time, with some services possibly experiencing intermittent problems even after the main issue was resolved.

 

This outage was a stark example of how interconnected and dependent we all are on cloud technology, especially in Spain’s financial and retail sectors where digital payments have become the norm.

 

 

Image: wikicommons