Geology never stops giving us surprises, this time on two fronts: on the one hand, the areas where earthquakes are generated and on the other, their distance from inhabited areas. When, like yesterday, the Earth's shock is located near an urban center, the consequences are catastrophic. Recent earthquakes greater than 5 Degrees on the Richter scale have to some extent avoided hitting near large cities. There are earthquakes every day and they do not jump to the front pages of the news as happened yesterday or a year ago with Lorca. In Europe they strike every week and in Spain every 2 or 3 years there is one. With the exception of Lorca in 2011, L'Aquila in 2009 or yesterday in Ferrara, what has been observed lately is an overwhelming percentage in areas far from urban centers or the sea.

Since 2004, Italy has considered itself a high-risk area for construction and urban planning purposes, yet Ferrara is surprisingly the area where these phenomena, as natural as storms or snowfalls, are least expected to occur, but with different rhythms.

We all know about the seismogenic character of the faults in southeastern Spain and the Pyrenees. However, we know little of those that generate damaging earthquakes in the plateaus or the North, qualified as in Ferrara of low seismic risk. But we must not forget that in Spain, we also have surprises with these 'intraplate' phenomena: in 1817, in Arnedo (La Rioja) there was an earthquake with a magnitude of over 6 Degrees Richter, felt from Palencia to Barcelona. In the middle of the civil war, October 1938, Arredondo in Cantabria surprised with an earthquake close to 5 Degrees, it was felt in Santander, but also in Bilbao and Vitoria. More recently, and already under the modern perspective of seismic regulations, we can remember the very superficial one in Pedro Muñoz (Ciudad Real). In 2007, it hit in the middle of an area already classified by the current regulations as "low seismic risk", the testimonies of moving frames, swinging lamps and scares of the population included Aragon or Asturias; only part of the Almagro Theater collapsed, there were no victims, but it says a lot about our knowledge of this bull skin we inhabit.

There are examples that insist on demonstrating our ignorance about the environment we inhabit. Just released the rule of 1994 (NCSE94), Lugo ceased to be seismic, the inhabitants of all Galicia, Castilla, Asturias and Cantabria came out terrified with an earthquake of 5.3 reminding the BOE that nature does not know about bureaucracy. There are many more examples if we include the epicenters of the sea, Galicia in 1969 with an earthquake of 5.9 Degrees. The more expected ones of Cabo de San Vicente in 1969 (7.8), then in 2007 and 2009 (6.2 and 6.3) felt in practically the whole peninsula with striking evictions in buildings in Cadiz, Seville or Madrid. All three were located far from the coast.

We are already more than seven billion souls and the trend towards concentration in cities is unstoppable. In a decade, close to 60% of the population will live in cities. In ten years, 100 million Chinese will leave the countryside. Many of our cities have been built in very short periods of time with criteria inherited from 20th century urban planning approaches. Tragically, a significant part of these cities, also in Europe and Spain, are located near regions of known (or not yet) seismic activity. Is it not time to rethink urban planning and develop our best mitigation tools such as the 2008 land law? Seismic-resistant construction standards have not been, are not, and will never be enough.