The Spanish National Earthquake Catalogue: Evolution, precision and completeness

This paper details the evolution, precision and completeness of the earthquake catalogue compiled by the Spanish National Geographic Institute. Over 100,000 earthquakes are included in this database, occurred in a region embracing Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Andorra and parts of France and Algeria. The catalogue has improved along time, thanks to the development of the seismic network and the upgrades of the routine data acquisition and analysis. The location precision is found to be much better on the Iberian Peninsula than offshore and benefitted especially from the implementation of modern automatic procedures for hypocentral determinations. The different magnitude scales reported in the catalogue, and effects of their changes, are reviewed. In the Iberian Peninsula, Canary Islands and surroundings, detailed successive maps of magnitude of completeness show an overall improvement over the last decades, particularly sudden when the digital broadband network was deployed. Earthquakes are found to be more frequently recorded during nights and weekends, thanks to the lower artificial noise. Despite most blasts have been filtered out of the catalogue, examples of remaining ones are identified by their spatial clustering around mines and quarries, and their timing at the intervals at which blasts are set off (even at night, in contrast to the common assumption that they only occur during daytime). This work highlights the importance of unveiling the spatial and temporal heterogeneities of earthquake catalogues and aims to help future analyses of the seismicity in the region.