General Area    Detail areas West Center East Balearic

The Betic Cordillera uplift is included within the Alpine orogeny, a large-scale tectonic process active since the late Mesozoic and during most of the Cenozoic. This event is characterized in the mediterranean context by the convergence between the Eurasian and African plate.

In this compressive environment between Europe and Africa, in the most western part of the Mediterranean Sea, the Alboran microplate migrated westwards and tangentially collided with the Iberian plate. As a consequence, the arc-shape Betic-Rif orogen got uplifted and folded since the Miocene. The Betic System represents the northern portion of this orogen.

The Betic Cordillera shows a very complex structure as a result of the thrust of the Alboran plate over the Iberian plate, and the development of inner neogen basins during the extensive phases contemporary to the regional compression. Therefore, the mountain range uplift involved the thrust of the Inner Zone unit, in which the Maláguide, Alpujárride and Nevado-Filábride complexes thrust over each other, over the different Outer Zone domains, firstly over the oceanic crust of the Gibraltar Trough and the turbidites associated, and secondly over the Prebetic, Intermedate and Subbetic domains.

The Betic System is located along the diffuse boundary between the African and Eurasian plate. Currently, the NW-SE oblique convergence between these two plates is still active with a displacement rate around 5 mm/yr. Westwards, the convergence is more tangential. In this regional tectonic framework, accommodated by several folds and active fault systems, there are three zones with different characteristics: the Eastern, the Central and the Western. The Eastern zone is dominated by a NNW-SSE compression accommodated by many NE-SW strike-slip faults among which the left-lateral displacement Jumilla, Alhama de Murcia, Carrascoy, Palomares or Carboneras faults and the right-lateral displacement Crevillente fault are noteworthy. In the Central zone, the stress field is expressed by normal with strike-slip component fault systems with NNW-SSE strike that are linked to the intramountainous sedimentary basins of Baza, Guadix and Granada. In the Western zone, the presence of known active faults is scarce, but the seismicity recorded in the area corresponds to reverse and strike-slip faults.