La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, was hit by a series of mini-earthquakes at the weekend, measuring between 1.5 and 2.7 on the Richter scale.

Between Saturday 7 and Tuesday 10 October the island experienced 50 tremors, with the biggest taking place on Saturday at 1pm.

However, the tremors took place at a depth of around 17 miles below sea level – deep enough that people on the island didn’t feel them.

La Palma is the most actively volcanic of the Canary Islands; its most recent eruption took place in 1971, when the Cumbre Vieja volcano spewed lava.

The recent set of tremors is catagorised as a “seismic swarm”, a phenomenon that is not considered abnormal, director of the IGN in the Canary Islands, María José Blanco, told Canarias7.

She noted, however, that they had “never recorded a similar swarm” since they started monitoring seismic activity on La Palma.

The IGN and the Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan) are now keeping a closer eye on La Palma’s volcanic activity in light of the swarm.