Cuba en crisis: análisis histórico y entrevista a exiliado

What does “apagón” mean in Spanish news?

Apagón is the word Spanish speakers reach for when the power goes out — a blackout. It comes straight from apagar, “to turn off” or “extinguish,” plus the suffix -ón, which turns an action into the sudden, large-scale event of that action. You’ll hear it constantly in Latin American news coverage wherever the electrical grid is under strain, as it currently is in Cuba.

The -ón suffix does this same job elsewhere: tropezón (a stumble, from tropezar, to trip) or resbalón (a slip). So once you know apagón, you’re primed to recognize a whole family of Spanish nouns built the same way — verb stem plus -ón for “the sudden event of X.”