that of 1755, the disaster that destroyed the city and changed science

Earthquakes in Lisbon can be more or less intenseto have greater or lesser reach and unleash or not alarm, but since the mid -eighteenth century all (whether strong, medium or slight) have something in common: in addition to stirring the ground, they remove the memory. Ease in the Portuguese capital is synonymous with 1755. of disaster. Of destruction. Of Thousands of dead. And also, in its own way, of regeneration.

It is so for a very simple reason: in Lisbon it is impossible for the soil to be stirred without the Lisbon remembers The drama that their great -grandparents lived (and perhaps some more tátara) on all the saints of 1755, when in a matter of a few hours the city trembled, burned and sank.

Literally.

The tremor recorded yesterday afternoon in the Lisbon Metropolitan Areaof Magnitude 4.7 And to which two other mild ones have happened today, 2.8 and 2.3they are no exception and (as has already happened with another similar In August of magnitude 5,3) dusting the memory of 1755.

A November morning …

The history of the earthquake that He swept Lisbon In 1755, there has been thousands of times and in almost all chronicles a circumstance is highlighted that continues to fascinate even today, 270 years after the disaster: its date. The ground trembled on the morning of November 1, All Saints’ Day, with the devotees Catholics praying in the temples and large amount of candles lit in honor of the deceased. Maybe it seems silly, but ultimately it turned out A key detail.

Thanks to testimonies such as the English Reverend Charles Davywho remembered that autumal morning prior to the earthquake as the “most beautiful”, we know that Towards 9.30 a.m. The Lisbon gathered in the city’s temples felt a rumble. The noise was so intense, so loud, that Davy believed that it was a carriage march.

“I soon disappointed myself, I discovered that it was due to a type of strange and frightening noise underground, similar to distant and hollow rumble of a thunder “, He recalled The British. It was right. That rumble was not caused by the wheels and horses of the horses as they moved on the cobblestone of Lisbon, but an earthquake that the researchers They still study today. In July 2021, without going any further, Nature public An article that deepened in Its causes and tectonic origin.

What neither Davy nor the rest of the inhabitants of Lisbon could know in 1755 is that the city would not be shaken by a single earthquake. They happened two or three tremors Of which the second was, from afar, the most intense.

Today it is estimated that it reached a magnitude of between 8.5 and 9 On the Richter scale, almost double that it shook yesterday the capital and superior to the one that hit Morocco in 2023. From the Institut de Ciènces del Mar They clarify In fact, one of the natural events is considered ” more destructive in history from Europe “.

Temples fell.

Palacios fell.

Public buildings fell.

And houses fell.

Earthquakes and something else

1755 Maybe it is far behind in time, but the Lisbon of then reacted to the tremors in the same way that we would do today: they sought refuge. A good part of the survivors of the first earthquake, regardless of sex or rank ran to the great open square next to the Tajo River. There Mr. Braddick, an English merchant whose testimony He rescued years ago The BBC was found to swirled.

There they cried mercy to heaven. And there they were surprised by the second shock of the ground, which like Braddick tells, “The ruin completed” of the buildings that had already been damaged. It is not necessary to imagine it. One of the forced stops for tourists visiting Lisbon is naked Gothic arcade of the church of Convent do carmoone of the architectural victims of that unfortunate day.

Just as if a drama in three acts were, the earthquakes that shook Lisbon’s foundations were only the beginning. The earthquake generated a tsamot with waves of between six and nine meters(It was felt Also in Cádizleaving thousands of victims) that unloaded violently in the lower part of the city. In less than an hour The water crashed into the Paseo Marítimo, where it surprised not a few Lisbon who had sought refuge in La Ribera.

There is even more. The disaster was accompanied by fires that were probably aggravated by the overturned stoves and the vote candles lit for the deceased. Years ago the National Geographic Institute published A monograph in which the devastation generated by the flames, which lasted for five or six days.

“As soon as it obscured, the entire city It seemed to shinewith such a bright light that could be read. You could say without exaggeration that there were fires in at least one hundred places at the same time “, Reverend Davy recountswho confirms that the fires lasted almost a week, “without interruption.”

A tragedy and a change

The result? Just a few years later Voltaire I pointed critically in his work Naive that the disaster had taken “three quarters” of Lisbon. Other sources They go further And they suggest that the tremors, the tsunami and the fire “almost completely” the Portuguese capital and knocked down around 12,000 homes.

The balance is in any case bleak, just like the balance of victims. Depending on the source that is handled, there is talk of 10,000 Deaths, 30,000, 60,000 or even 90,000. A barbarity if one takes into account that at that time Lisbon would have between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. Such was the debacle that is told that Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marqués de Pombalhe advised King José I be pragmatic: he played “rescue the living and bury the dead.”

The 1755 disaster was not only felt in the balance of deaths, injured, missing and buildings, squares, roads and crumbled temples. In its way the tremor extended to the cultural and science of the time, giving a fundamental impulse to the Earthquake research.

“The social incidence that the event had produced a remarkable advance in the knowledge and effects of earthquakes and surely marked the beginning of modern seismology,” he says The study Posted by Ign, by Martínez Solares.

The tragedy It served as a lever Also for antisismic engineering, which found a valuable laboratory in the reconstruction of the capital. The debris took advantage of the ground, wider streets, smaller buildings and constructions with a new mentality were drawn, thinking of future earthquakes.

The Marquis de Pombal also took the opportunity to boost the enlightened mentality he had acquired during his stays in England and Austria, an approach that moved to the planning and recovery of Lisbon. Today It is considered In fact, the 1755 tragedy served, in a way, to drive Modernization of Portugal.

Such was the scope and relevance of what happened that had consequences beyond Portugal herself. On the subject they reached write (and argue angrily) great illustrated minds, such as Kant, Voltaire or Jean Jacques Rousseau.

A demolishing earthquake that shattered Lisbon, gave wings to a new science and removed the Enlightenment in Portugal and Europe.

An earthquake in which since then They look at the rest of tremors That, like yesterday, they shake the Portuguese capital.

Images | Wikipedia 1 and 2 and Allie Caulfield (Flickr)

In Xataka | Portugal has unearthed his struggle for the sovereignty of an Extremaduran town. Problem: Obviously the last two centuries