This article is going to be a bit of a shocker, so consider yourself warned. The Llavanera stream is the third most important watercourse on the island of Ibiza. It flows into the port just after passing through the Golden Mile of Ibiza Town, right between the Ibiza Gran Hotel (a five-star luxury hotel) and the Salt Bae luxury apartments, The N Residences, currently under construction (starting from 'Mirón'). At the foot of the Llavanera, you can admire the coveted postcard view of Dalt Vila. Everything is luxurious in this place. Except for the smell, if it's rained too much.

The sky is cloudy in San Lorenzo And before the floodwaters are unloaded, Mateu Quina carries a sturdy, heavy piece of wood from the farmyard, fitting precisely onto the rails installed along the sides of his front door. It's not simply the sloping table typical of village houses, designed to channel water away from the street. There's a premeditated, homemade engineering behind this system, which Mateu installs almost automatically. He wants to prevent everything in his home from being buried under mud again if the torrent overflows, if the water surges like it did on that fateful October 9, 2018. That afternoon, he went upstairs with his wife and daughter. As they watched the rising water, they heard cars crashing against the now-protected door. Until one of them flung the door wide open. "The blast came strong and hit the neighbor's wall. In our house, all the furniture ended up at the back of the dining room. We stayed upstairs from six in the evening until one in the afternoon the next day without moving, until they came to get us," he recounts.

The latest natural disaster to hit the Balearic Islands was the historic flood that hit Ibiza this week, when In just a few hours, nearly 300 liters per square meter fell.The rain, both intense and efficient, caused widespread flooding, road closures, damage to homes and businesses, and forced the Ibizan Council to request that Madrid declare it a disaster zone. This episode adds to a blacklist of natural disasters that, over the past few decades, have left a strong mark on the entire archipelago.