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?
This depends on where and why. I know that in some parts of the Carribbean, for example, most towers will only last a day or two, but there are some that can last weeks with satellite backhauls providing minimal service to large areas.