MADRID, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Tourist access to the medieval Alhambra complex was restricted on Tuesday after three more earthquakes shook Spain’s southern Granada province, causing some damage to buildings in the region and forcing the closure of some museums and sport facilities.
At least three people were lightly injured, Andalusia’s regional official Antonio Sanz told reporters, adding that one of them, a minor, was taken to hospital.
The earthquakes each had magnitudes above 4, the country’s National Geographic Institute (IGN) said.
The tremors followed Saturday’s magnitude 5 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.
This time, authorities at the Alhambra interrupted tourist access to parts of the sprawling complex on a hill above the city that 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.
(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Alison Williams)
