Three more earthquakes have hit Spain‘s southern Granada province, causing some damage to buildings and forcing the closure of some museums and sports facilities, including the medieval Alhambra complex, where tourist access was restricted.
The earthquakes on Tuesday each had magnitudes above 4, the country’s National Geographic Institute (IGN) said.
At least three people were lightly injured, Andalusia’s regional top emergency official Antonio Sanz told reporters, adding that one of them, a minor, was taken to hospital.
The tremors followed Saturday’s 5.0-magnitude earthquake in the historic city of Granada, which damaged houses and cars and forced the temporary closure of the medieval palace-fortress of the Alhambra, one of Spain’s main tourist sites that was visited by 2.7 million people last year.
Following Saturday’s earthquake, Mr Sanz said there was no damage to the Alhambra palace.
“There is no serious structural damage, no serious material damage and there are no casualties,” he said, adding that the Alhambra had “not been affected in any way”.
This time, authorities at the Alhambra interrupted tourist access to parts of the sprawling complex on a hill above the city, which is a monument of Islamic architecture in Spain.
The provincial authority of Granada said in a statement it was closing administrative buildings, museums and sporting facilities but kept primary health centres open for now.
Granada’s metro system said on social media platform X it was reducing the speed of its trains to 30 kph (19 mph) as a precautionary measure, and local media showed several hotels being evacuated.
Some buildings, mostly residential, suffered damage in the tremors, with large cracks showing in the walls, parts of some facades dislodged and bricks strewn across pavements.
The largest of Tuesday’s quakes, with a magnitude of 4.7, occurred at 10:37 a.m. (0837 GMT) and had its surface-level epicentre in the town of Gojar, 10 km (6 miles) south of Granada city, the IGN said. Surface-level quakes are felt more intensely and are more likely to cause localised damage to buildings than a deeper tremor of similar strength.
The Gojar earthquake was quickly followed by slightly lighter tremors in two nearby towns on Granada’s southern outskirts.