Obviously this is about the power outage in Spain.
While normally, if a card declines, people would probably have to leave their IDs with the restaurant while they went to get a withdrawl from their bank; this is a power outage, withdrawls wouldn’t work. It would be silly to arrest people because of a power outage. So I’m assuming people just have to give the restaurant owner/management their identity info with a promise to pay?
And power outages shouldn’t affect buses, since they run on gasoline/diesel, but the payment system processing transit passes might not work. Do buses still get run during a power outage and they just let people on for free, or do they just shut down the bus lines?
In wet areas or areas during a snow melt, sump pumps are a big factor. Many people have emergency generators or battery back up pumps if their sump pit has a lot of flow.
Also rural people will often lose power to their water pumps and disinfection equipment for drinking water.