It has been eight years since the Sant Llorenç flash flood. The tragic death of 13 people brought to the table how poorly things have been done for decades, and how we have accumulated people and homes in places where it was not only already prohibited to do so, but where common sense also dictated it was not a good idea.

Last September 27th was World Rivers Day and in the Balearic Islands almost no one remembered it. Perhaps because we think that we do not have rivers here. But we do have them: they are our torrents, which the Hydrological Plan recognizes as water bodies in the river category. There are 70 of them, totaling about 550 kilometers. We only talk about them when a flash flood arrives and the water reminds us of where it used to pass before we built over it. Once the storm has passed, they return to oblivion.

The Military Emergency Unit (UME) intervened overnight Tuesday, carrying out cleanup work near the airport and removing water from roads and homes in Ibiza. The UME reported this in a message on the social network X, in which they detailed that they carried out missions such as cleaning a highway near Ibiza airport and removing water accumulated due to heavy rain from homes, garages, and streets.

The Balearic Government has cleaned more than 310 kilometers of torrents in the Balearic Islands in the last two years to combat flooding caused by phenomena such as floods, which, according to the president, Marga Prohens, will be "increasingly frequent and more intense." Prohens explained these figures during her visit to the Avenc torrent in Campos, where cleaning and maintenance work is currently underway. Of the kilometers cleaned, 253 were in Mallorca; 25 in Menorca, including interventions resulting from last year's flood; and 37 in Ibiza. In the first half of this year alone, work has been carried out on more than 50 kilometers.