Red beds and related shallow marine siliciclastic sediments within the extensional Catalan Neogene basins offer a unique opportunity to study the relationship between sediment anisotropy, remanence acquisition and inclination shallowing. On the basis of the dominant fabric features, sedimentary facies are grouped into laminated, massive and bioturbated. The bulk susceptibility appears to be dominated by paramagnetic phyllosilicates and clay minerals. The magnetic susceptibility fabric is dominantly foliated while the degree of anisotropy is very variable and is dependent on the facies type. Strong foliation dominates in the laminated sediments whereas weak anisotropy characterizes the bioturbated and massive mass-flow facies. Moreover, we observe a correlation between facies type and remanence inclination. The undisrupted thinly laminated facies provides the most biased inclination values: 20¿ as opposed to 60¿ of the expected geomagnetic field. Steeper inclinations are reported from bioturbated muds, while the best record of the geomagnetic inclination is found in the weakly anisotropic mass flow deposits. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996