Summary El Ejido is located in an area of moderate-to-high seismic hazard in SE Spain. The Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW), a non-invasive seismic method, well-suited for urban exploration, has been used in this work to characterize the shallow sediments in this urban area. The performance, as seismic sources, of a sledge hammer and a manual vibratory rammer is compared here. Subsurface materials have been classified in terms of Eurocode-8 soil types to facilitate the implementation of these results in seismic hazard studies.