Vega Baja del Segura

The Vega Baja del Segura - German : Segura lowland - is an administrative district (so-called comarca ) of the Spanish province of Alicante in the autonomous region of Valencia . It is located in the extreme south of the Alicante province and borders the Murcia region .

Important cities

Its capital is the historically significant Orihuela . Orihuela is inland, in the so-called Orihuela Garden. Orihuela has 84,626 inhabitants (INE 2008) and is the city with the largest municipal area in the comarca . The second most important city of the Vega Baja is the coastal city of Torrevieja , which has the most inhabitants of the comarca with 103,540.

Administrative structure

The comarca is made up of 27 parishes divided into two judicial districts, that of Orihuela and that of Torrevieja .

geography

The geographical relief of the comarca is the plain in the lower reaches of the River Segura with its fertile garden landscape (so-called Huertas) near the coast of the Costa Blanca . The inland also has mountainous areas with dry agriculture (especially olive cultivation) that does not require artificial irrigation.

The Vega Baja is at high risk of earthquakes as a result of the clash of the European and African continental plates. The faults of the African and Eurasian plates reach the earth's surface at a depth of only 40 to 50 km. Scientists can see for sure that after the devastating earthquake of 1829 a comparably strong earthquake will come again. As a high-risk area for earthquakes, the Vega Baja is next to Granada the most earthquake-prone area in Spain. According to a study by the University of Alicante, none of the properties in Vega Baja built in the 20th century before the 1990s as a result of the Spanish building boom have no earthquake protection whatsoever. Corresponding protection requirements have only existed since 1992.

1829 earthquake

On March 21, 1829 an earthquake with 6.6 on the Richter scale caused 389 deaths, almost 400 injured and destroyed 3,000 houses in various places in the Vega Baja completely and another 2,500 so badly that they were no longer habitable. All three great bridges over the Segura had disappeared, even churches and monasteries collapsed, and the fortress of Guardamar del Segura also crumbled due to the shock waves. The worst hit was Almoradi , which alone had 200 fatalities and was practically completely destroyed. According to calculations, the epicenter was between Benejuzar , Rojales and Torrevieja . Due to a royal decree, 8.5 million were donated in a few weeks and the Basque engineer "Jose Augustin Laramendi Muguruza" emerged as the lead planner for the reconstruction in the Vega Baja. Larramendi designed city plans for Almoradi, Benejuzar, Guardamar del Segura and Torrevieja, the core of which is still valid today. The houses and streets were arranged like a chessboard in squares. The width of the paths was 14 to 17 meters in order to avoid the houses collapsing into one another as well as the spread of fires and to leave enough space for refugees. The height of the single-storey houses could not exceed five meters due to the unstable building materials of the Vega Baja. This reconstruction marks the beginning of social housing and organized urban planning in Spain.

language

In Vega Baja Spanish is mainly spoken ( Castellano ), but there are also some areas in which the Valencian dialect is also used, especially in the municipality of Guardamar del Segura and in the Orihuelan hamlet of Barbarroja.

Coordinates: 38 ° 5 ′  N , 0 ° 57 ′  W