Spain plans softer emergency alerts after concerns over loud tones

Spain's interior ministry plans to add a new tier of "pre-alert" notifications to the ES-Alert emergency warning system, featuring less strident sounds that users will be able to turn off.

The softer tones will be employed for lower-risk situations.

Imma Soler, deputy director of Catalonia's Civil Protection Agency, told public broadcaster 3Cat that the Spanish government has already developed the feature, describing it as "a kind of pre-alert."

The new alerts will be accompanied by a "less insistent" tone and can be disabled on mobile phones by those who prefer not to receive them.

The announcement comes after the Catalan Parliament approved a motion on Thursday urging Salvador Illa's government to "improve" activation protocols for the ES-Alert system, seeking "a balance between too much and too little."

Soler explained that ES-Alert was launched in response to a European directive requiring each member state to implement an emergency alert system.

It is managed by Spain's interior ministry, while each autonomous community is responsible for issuing the alerts.

Soler noted that ES-Alert "is still young" – it began testing in 2023 – and remains under development.

One of the next improvements, Soler said, will be to introduce "a scale of alerts that are less disruptive, less intrusive in people's daily lives, and that can be turned off."

Civil Protection acknowledges particular concern for vulnerable groups, including people with mental health conditions.

"Sometimes these sharp sounds can affect them very deeply," Soler said.

Alerts issued

Civil Protection issued an alert on Wednesday evening warning of intense rainfall across Catalonia through the night and on Thursday morning.

That real warning came just two days after 5 million people in the Greater Barcelona area received a test notification as part of a planned drill.