Costa Brava earthquake of 3.8 widely and strongly felt, but did not cause any damage

The 112 emergency hotline received over 30 calls after the tremor, of which at least 12 were from Massanet de la Selva and another four from Vidreres.

Measuring 3.8 on the Richter scale, the quake's epicentre was between the towns of Sils and Coloma de Farners in the La Selva district of the province of Girona, Catalunya's northernmost and the last Mediterranean province before the French border.

It was felt throughout La Selva and beyond – and even as far south as the province of Barcelona, where the Civil Protection squad received panicked calls from the towns of Sant Joan Despí and Vilassar de Mar.

According to Catalunya's Institute of Cartography and Geology (IGC), the quake was only five kilometres underground, which would account for its being strongly felt over such a wide area.

Generally – with the exception of the May 2011 disaster in Lorca (Murcia) – earthquakes in Spain are merely anecdotal, usually just a sudden and unexplained shudder like a heavy lorry driven past, or not even felt at all.

Quakes reaching as high as 4 on the Richter scale are so uncommon they tend to make headline news, and level 5 quakes have only happened a handful of times in Spain's history, mainly in the south-east.

A level-4 tremor would feel alarmingly violent for a few seconds, but would not tend to cause any greater damage to property than a typical gale-force wind.