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British tourists in Spain’s Costa Blanca were shaken by an intense earthquake on Tuesday morning, with one person saying they were “almost thrown out of bed” by the tremors.
The quake rattled through popular resort towns just after midnight, leading locals and holidaymakers to make almost a dozen alarmed calls to emergency services.
“It was something else. The whole house was shaking. I couldn’t go back to sleep as I thought there was more to come. This was the strongest and loudest I’ve experienced yet,” said one Briton in the Los Balcones area, just south of Torrevieja.
“My whole house shook!” one social media user wrote. Another added: “Well, an earthquake just woke me up here at home in Torrevieja… What an unpleasant feeling. I’m freaked out.”
One resident told local media it was “the strongest quake I have ever felt in my life”.
The quake’s epicentre was located just three miles offshore and only one mile below the seabed, making it widely felt across southern Valencia and parts of Murcia.
The tremor registered a magnitude of 2.8, according to Spain’s Instituto Geográfico Nacional.
Local authorities said the quake rated III-IV on the European Macroseismic Scale, meaning it was “clearly felt by people indoors”.
Emergency services received 11 calls from concerned citizens, although there were no reports of structural damage.
In Orihuela Costa, locals reported “a lot of noise and vibrations”, with one person saying it was “short but strong”.
Matías, a local resident, described the noise created by shifting tectonic plates: “I’m used to these types of events, but last night’s quake produced a very loud noise, as if rocks were breaking deep underground.”
Others mentioned a loud bang followed by creaking noises from the masonry of their buildings.
Torrevieja is just 70 miles from Benidorm, a resort town popular with British tourists.
Spain’s southeastern corner has a history of earthquakes. In 2011, an earthquake of 5.1 magnitude killed nine people and caused considerable damage in the town of Lorca, in the Murcia region.
Earlier this year, Greece’s Aegean Islands were racked by a major series of tremors, including a powerful, shallow 5.3 magnitude earthquake on the popular tourist destination of Santorini.
More than 12,800 quakes were detected in the region between January and February by the University of Athens’ Seismological Laboratory, leading to damage to buildings and infrastructure and warnings from authorities to take care when visiting dangerous places.