ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
This article is part of the Research TopicTracing Stress Fields Along the Africa-Eurasia Plate BoundaryView all articles
The July 14, 2025 Mw 5.3 Earthquake in the NE Alboran Sea (Spain): Insights into the Causative Source from Seismic Relocation and Moment Tensor Analysis
Provisionally accepted
Lucia Lozano1,2*
Carolina López-Sánchez1
Carmen del Fresno1María Victoria Manzanedo1
Juan Vicente Cantavella1- 1Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Madrid, Spain
- 2Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
On 14 July 2025, an Mw 5.3 earthquake occurred in the northeastern Alboran Sea, Spain. Its epicenter was close to the Eastern Betics Shear Zone, a region that has historically experienced major destructive earthquakes, including events with macroseismic intensity VIII–IX (EMS-98) in Vera (1518), Alhama de Almería (1522), and Dalías (1804). However, in the area closest to the epicenter, offshore from the Almería coast, no previous earthquakes of this magnitude or greater have been recorded, and the nearest mapped active faults, the Carboneras Fault and the Palomares Fault, are both approximately 50 km away. To investigate the source responsible for this earthquake, we compute its seismic moment tensor and relocate the subsequent seismic sequence using a three-dimensional Earth model in a non-linear probabilistic approach and a double-difference relocation. Additionally, to better understand this offshore area, we apply the same methodology to study three similar recent seismic sequences along the Carboneras Fault in 2008, 2010, and 2012, west of the 2025 event. The mainshock moment tensor solution shows a strike-slip faulting mechanism consistent with the regional tectonics, and the relocated sequences form dense, elongated clusters, mainly following a NW–SE trend, perpendicular to the Carboneras Fault. The depth distribution shows that hypocenters in the 2025 seismic series are deeper, ranging from 5 to 20 km and slightly increasing to the northwest, compared with the previous sequences, whose hypocenters are mostly shallower (<10 km) and show no clear dipping direction. The relocation results improve depth convergence and accuracy of earthquake locations of the northeastern Alboran seismicity, providing a better-constrained earthquake catalog that helps to improve our understanding of this complex offshore region.
Keywords: Double-difference location, Focal mechanism, moment tensor inversion, NE Alboran Sea, non-linear probabilistic location
Received: 22 Dec 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Lozano, López-Sánchez, del Fresno, Manzanedo and Cantavella. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lucia Lozano
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.