This Monday, October 24, they begin tests of the new Civil Protection alert systemso if your iPhone is warning you loudly, don’t worry, it’s just a test.
For years, there has been an alert system that uses the network of mobile antennas to simultaneously notify the entire population of emergencies, such as natural disasters, imminent dangers or any other emergency that may arise. In Europe this Monday, October 24, the tests will begin in Europe, and the tests will be deployed in a scheduled way in different regions of the country, so our iPhone will notify us of an alert with an “ES-Alert TEST” message that will cause our phone starts emitting a very high-pitched sound that will only stop when we accept it, to confirm that we have seen it. The scheduled dates for these tests are as follows:
- October 24: Cantabria, Andalusia and Asturias.
- October 27: Extremadura, Valencian Community and Galicia.
- November 2: Murcia, Balearic Islands, Madrid, Aragon, Navarre and Catalonia.
- November 10: Basque Country, Castile and León, Canary Islands and Ceuta
- November 16: Castilla-La Mancha, La Rioja and Melilla.
The system uses telephone networks, so all telephones connected to the zones in which the alert is issued will receive the notification simultaneously. This is a system that will only be used for important and urgent noticesso we don’t have to worry about getting them frequently, or so we hope.
If you want to turn off these notifications on iPhone, you can do this from the Notifications section in your device settings, by scrolling down, disabling the “Civil Protection Alerts” option. We do not recommend that you disable these alerts, because although we hope never to receive them, if they are necessary, they can save our lives.
