Nine earthquakes recorded in southern Spain in just one day

SPAIN’S National Geographic Institute (IGN) has registered nine earthquakes in just 24 hours in Andalucia.

The initial quake, centred on the town of El Saucejo in the province of Sevilla had a magnitude of 4.2 on the Richter scale.

The epicentre was detected at a depth of eleven kilometres.

Several smaller aftershocks followed with magnitudes ranging between 1.5 and 2.8, at  depths between 11 and 12 kilometres.

There are no reports of injuries or damage. 

The seismic activity comes in the same week that Malaga province experienced four small earthquakes in less than 24 hours when the villages of Campillos, Colmenar and Teba experienced a combined total of four small earthquakes.

Each year, between 1,200 and 1,400 tremors are recorded in the Iberian peninsula. 

The last deadly quake in Spain was in  May 2011 when eleven people died and more than 400 were injured after two 5.4 and 4.5 quakes  caused extensive damage in the town of Lorca, in Murcia.

On November 1, 1755, an 8.5-magnitude quake that originated southwest of Cape St. Vincent created a 15-metre tsunami that hit Western Europe and northern Africa, making it the greatest quake-related tragedy ever recorded in Spain, according to the IGN.This event went down in history as the Lisbon earthquake because of the destruction it caused to the Portuguese capital, where an estimated 15,000 people lost their lives, but the Spanish provinces of Huelva and Cádiz were also affected.