The article addresses the flow of information through different territories the Spanish Monarchy about two late 17th century calamities: the 1687 Lima earthquake and the 1688 Samnium earthquake. The main focus of attention is the circulation of news, accounts and opinions, both within the peripheral and central governmental bodies, and beyond the institutional networks. As the months passed, in the wider “public sphere” the two events underwent significant transformations and were given powerful symbolic signification; moreover, they were often associated in a single interpretative scheme by natural philosophers, theologists, preachers, and even in the collective rites and processions that were celebrated in several cities of the Iberian Peninsula. Tracing the circulation of news in times of emergency and their transformation in the different passages from one channel to another, allows to observe closely how collective traumatic events are symbolically mediated. Furthermore, it also sheds some new light on the mechanisms of information gathering and dissemination, which did not only follow the center-periphery pattern, but often connected the main cities of the Monarchy with each other.