Again in northern Italy and considered the least seismic area of that country. Italy is already engaged in revising its recent seismic rules and regulations . The aftershocks above 4Mw can be counted by dozens since May 20, a common factor underlies: the relative shallowness and persistence of the events that are being generated. We are facing what in seismology we call a seismic crisis.

We cannot be sure when it will subside, what is clear is that we must be very alert, very much so, and not only in Italy, we will see why. Nature is used to work with cycles that can be capricious. We must not forget that earthquakes are natural phenomena in themselves harmless, there have always been and always will be, and like rain, storms or snowfalls, they have their own recurrences even if we still do not manage to understand them in all their expression.

Nature always surprises us, 2012 is already a record of surprises. On April 11, two earthquakes of 8.7 and 8.2 scale shook a large part of the Indian Ocean, provoking massive displacements in India, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia. The 8.7 earthquake became a record for its genesis, never before had a rift fault earthquake reached such a magnitude, so much so that it has entered the list of the ten strongest in our history with Sumatra 2004, Chile 2010 or Fukushima 2011.

Then large cities were mobilized, some more orderly and planned than others; now cities are interconnected systems, too vulnerable due to their extension and the way we have planned them during the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first century. We thus suggested that in the next weeks, months, small and medium earthquakes were going to occur all over the planet following a fractal readjustment model .

To understand: some scholars of these phenomena usually make a reading with the emerging fractal models applied to geology, geophysics and also with other disciplines. A fractal is a (physical, temporal) element of a system that reflects at scale the larger model , such is the case of a tree and its branches, a fern and its leaves, a romanescu, or a river and its tributaries. Each piece of the system forms the exact image of the whole but in tiny size. If you move the trunk, dozens, hundreds of branches move. Seismicity is fractal.
Seismic cycle

In 2004 Sumatra opened the door to a new seismic cycle (now accepted by many experts). Since then the seismic activity seems to have increased. Then Italy published its seismic zonation counting these medium, small earthquakes; as fractal models show there have been many, the problem is when they occur near cities, this is the case.

This is what we should prepare for. Ten more years and 60% of the planet's population will live in cities, one hundred million Chinese will leave the countryside, a new experience for life on Earth.

Spain is like the rest of Europe: an advanced seismic rules and regulations of 2002 was left obsolete in Lorca and the very advanced land law of 2008, one of our best weapons, still undeveloped. No wonder that Lugo, Ciudad Real, Cantabria or La Rioja already surprised us with earthquakes greater than 5Mw being regions successively catalogued of leave seismicity in the BOE. As in Ferrara or Bologna, it could be a caricature of reality. Then what will not be Messina, Calabria, Catania, Murcia, Alicante, Granada or Navarra?