alumbrón

What it means

1. 1.

   The brief stretch when the electricity is actually on. A sarcastic coinage that inverts apagón, 'blackout': if the power is off most of the day, the notable event is the light, not the dark.

2. 2.

   Used as a unit of planning — cooking, charging phones and pumping water all get scheduled around it.

Examples with translations

• Aprovecha el alumbrón y pon el arroz.

  Make the most of the power being on and get the rice going.

• Aquí ya no hay apagones, hay alumbrones.

  We don't have blackouts here any more, we have brief bursts of electricity.

  Note: The joke in its standard form, current across the island through the energy crisis of the 2020s.

Where it comes from

Built on alumbrar, 'to light', with the augmentative -ón lifted straight from apagón. The coinage is old enough to have appeared during the blackouts of the 1990s Special Period but became genuinely ubiquitous after 2021.

First attested: 1990s, revived from 2021