Were you caught out by yet another holiday that took place in Motril on Wednesday 13 January? Just when you thought it was safe to get on with your daily life after the extraordinarily long Christmas and New Year holidays in the area, up pops another day off! I sometimes wonder why I bother to get out of bed at all due to the amount of holidays!
It’s OK if you aren’t working, although I have often heard people having a good whinge (moan) that they got up especially early to do some banking or shopping to find that, yet again, there is a holiday and everything is shut. If you are trying to earn a meager crust here in the area then you really do have to work hard around all the holiday periods to get anything achieved. Enough of the moaning …what was this latest holiday? We have to go back quite a few years to 1804 and 1884 when Motril was raised to the ground by two enormous earthquakes (the first was of an intensity of 6.7 on the Richter scale and the second of 6.5).
We now have the Virgen de la Cabeza, who hopefully protects us from further earthquakes and whose annual day we celebrate on 13 January (otherwise known as Earthquake Day). Since earlier times there have been two further seismic movements of notable intensity in the area that occurred on Christmas Eve 1993 and in January 1994.
Geographically, Motril sits in an area known for its greater levels of seismic activity on the Iberian Peninsula. The earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 registered 7.0 on the Richter scale and has caused the loss of a tremendous amount of lives. Motril Council has confirmed that there are complex plans in place should another emergency of this nature hit this area again and that the harbour and hospital are well prepared. Back in 1804 most of the buildings in Motril collapsed and inhabitants fled to the beaches thinking they would be on safe ground there… little did they know that the earthquake could have triggered a tidal wave and the beach would have been the worst possible place to find safety.
We are reassured by the Council that the building structures in the town are now built to withstand seismic movement although I should think that most of the illegal cortijos in the surrounding countryside would collapse … which might sort out the Council’s problems on illegal buildings in the area.