Ready For The Tsunami?

Southwest Europe carries a risk that most of its population knows nothing about. The Iberian Peninsula sits in one of the most seismically dangerous zones in the Atlantic, with geological records showing between nine and fourteen tsunamis over the past nine thousand years. The last struck in 1755. The Great Lisbon Earthquake reshaped a continent and, in doing so, gave rise to modern Earth Sciences.

Director Erik Martínez Westley's documentary asks what happens when the next one arrives. The question is not hypothetical. Drawing on new historical evidence about the frequency of these events, the film examines the geological forces at work beneath Southwest Europe and places them within a longer, largely forgotten record of destruction. The Mediterranean, too, carries its own history of large tsunamis.

Where the film moves beyond risk is in its search for answers. Communities in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest face comparable threats and have developed technologies and preparedness frameworks that could apply far beyond their own coastlines. The documentary brings those innovations into focus, exploring what practical, science-led solutions already exist and how they might be shared across vulnerable regions.

Rigorous, evidence-based, and genuinely unsettling in its implications, this is a film that takes an urgent subject seriously.