THE WAYPOINT SUR
Back to the kitchen table to make sure you have the right provider
The glass says break in case of emergency
We had plans for today. This summer we are working back through our own archive, issue by issue, checking whether what we told you months ago is still true. Day three was queued and ready. Then Spain's energy ministry began revoking the licence of an electricity supplier we have reviewed, 144,000 customers learned they may be switched to a new company without being asked, and the archive moved to tomorrow. Consider the glass broken.
There is a certain symmetry in the interruption. The point of this audit season is that the status of anything you were told to trust has a shelf life. Today it ran out in real time.
What happened
Holaluz is a Barcelona-founded electricity supplier with a real following among English-speaking residents on the Costa, partly for its all-renewable tariffs and end-to-end solar packages, partly because readers tell us they can reach an English-speaking agent. On 16 July, Spain's energy ministry MITECO resolved to begin withdrawing its licence to operate as a supplier, published in the BOE on 18 July. The trigger: roughly €6 million in unpaid peajes — grid-access tolls, the fees every supplier owes the companies that own the wires. BME Growth suspended Holaluz's shares from trading on 20 July. The company has ten business days to respond, a window that closes at the end of this week, and it is calling the process "a one-off administrative formality." The ministry's paperwork suggests it disagrees. Confirmed July 2026.
If the licence goes, Holaluz's roughly 144,000 electricity customers transfer automatically to a comercializadora de referencia — regulated reference supplier, a designated arm of Endesa, Iberdrola or Naturgy. Nobody's power gets cut. That part of the system works, and it has worked before: when a supplier called Energika folded in 2018, the same machinery moved its customers overnight.
What the backstop actually protects
Here is the part worth two minutes even if you have never heard of Holaluz. We walked through how this market is built on 6 July: the grid company that physically delivers your electricity is a regional monopoly you never chose, and the only thing you pick is the supplier that bills you. The supplier is a contract, nothing more.
Spain's backstop guarantees the electrons. It does not guarantee the deal. Transfer to a reference supplier means your contract dies with the company. The fixed rate you negotiated, gone. The green tariff, gone. Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy, meanwhile, absorb 144,000 customers they never had to win.
For solar households there is a sharper edge. Holaluz's "virtual battery," the credit balance where your surplus sunshine has been accumulating, is a commercial product of the company, with no standing in the regulated system. Consumer group OCU's read matches ours: balances do not survive a change of supplier. The greenest, best-prepared customers are holding the largest bag. Confirmed July 2026.
And one wrinkle almost nobody has heard of. The tariff you would land on is PVPC — the government-set price that moves hour by hour, but only households with 10 kW of contracted power or less have a right to it. Above that, and a villa with a pool and summer air conditioning often is above it, you pay the reference tariff with a surcharge of around 20% until you choose a supplier yourself. The households most likely to be moved expensively are the ones least likely to know they are exposed.
What to do this week
If you are with Holaluz, three moves, none of them panic:
Get your virtual-battery balance in writing now, while customer service still answers the phone (900 64 92 92). A screenshot of the app plus a written statement of the balance.
Check the potencia contratada — contracted power level on your last bill. At 10 kW or under, the default landing is survivable while you decide. Above it, moving first matters more.
Move first rather than being moved. A switch is free and takes 15 to 21 days, so a contract signed this week beats the transfer. Before you sign anything, run the numbers through our contract check: upload the bill, the file never leaves your device, and it earns us nothing whichever way you go. Our full Holaluz review, updated with the licence situation as it develops, stays live here.
If you are not with Holaluz, the homework still transfers. Could you name your comercializadora without checking? Whoever manages the household bills should be able to answer that in one look at the last PDF, because the app logo and the company on the contract are not always the same thing.
Spanish-lite
¿Con qué comercializadora tengo el contrato? — Which supplier is my contract with? The one-line audit of your own bill.
Quiero un certificado del saldo de mi batería virtual. — I want a written statement of my virtual-battery balance. The sentence for the Holaluz customer line this week.
The bottom line
Spain's backstop will keep every one of those 144,000 households lit, and it will do it by moving them somewhere they did not choose, on terms they did not pick. The window between those two outcomes is about a week of attention, starting now. We planned to spend today checking our old homework; the market decided to check it for us.
Onwards — A. and the WaypointSur team, lights on, glass broken.
