The Palomares Fault is a north-northeast trending left-lateral fault running roughly 100 kilometres through southeastern Almería, from the coast near the town of Palomares inland toward the Vera basin. It forms part of the Eastern Betic Shear Zone, the belt that absorbs much of the slow convergence between Africa and Iberia.
Motion is predominantly strike-slip with slip rates of well under a millimetre per year, so earthquakes here are infrequent but the fault is clearly expressed in the landscape. It offsets young sediments and river courses, evidence that it has remained active into recent geological time.
The Palomares Fault has not produced a documented great earthquake, but its position within the seismically restless Almería-Murcia corridor keeps it under study. Geologists regard it alongside the neighbouring Carboneras and Alhama de Murcia faults as part of a linked system capable of moderate damaging events.