Whenever it rains heavily in Portugal, the pattern repeats: streets flooded, cars submerged, shopkeepers cleaning up losses, families frightened. The next day, damage is tallied, and promises are made to “assess the situation once it is over.” Then life goes on until the next episode.
The truth is harsh but simple. We cannot pretend these episodes are exceptional. Intense, concentrated rainfall has become part of our reality, and paradoxically, it alternates with increasingly prolonged droughts.
We are experiencing extremes: too much water in a short period, and scarcity over long stretches. Our cities and towns, many designed for another era and a different climate, are not prepared for this new reality.
The problem is not just the amount of rain. It is what has been done to urban areas. Soils have been paved over, streams and rivers channelled, construction has taken place in naturally flood-prone areas, and drainage networks no longer cope with current intense peaks.
When a watercourse’s natural capacity is exceeded, water will always find another path, often with the consequences we have seen on the news in recent days.
There is an obvious paradox. The same water that today causes damage due to excess will be the water we need tomorrow in times of scarcity. The challenge is no longer just to drain it quickly. It is to manage it intelligently.
Reacting after a problem occurs is costly and exhausting. Above all, it is avoidable.
Preparing cities for floods does not mean eliminating risk. That would be unrealistic. It means reducing it in a technical and structured way. It means creating areas where water can be temporarily stored, reinforcing drainage where truly needed, restoring watercourses, and investing in solutions that delay, infiltrate, and control runoff.
It also means making use of the water. Promoting retention, infiltration, and recharge, integrating sustainable urban drainage systems, and aligning hydraulic planning with a broader vision of the urban water cycle.
There are positive examples in Portugal that prove this works. In Setúbal, for instance, flood management has been addressed in a structured way for about 20 years, with the creation of a Stormwater Drainage Master Plan that identified vulnerabilities and defined concrete solutions.
A key part of that strategy was building a retention basin in a vacant area, now the Várzea Urban Park, which controls the flow of the Figueira and Livramento streams.
Before it was built, low-lying areas regularly flooded during heavy rainfall. Today, this infrastructure, with a capacity of around 240,000 cubic meters and integrated into a system totalling about 300,000 cubic meters, acts as a buffer at the city’s entrance, temporarily holding peak flows and protecting lower-lying areas.
It is more than a hydraulic project. It is an integrated urban solution. Várzea Park is both a leisure space and a flood protection system. Rain was not stop. The city was given time to manage it. That “time” makes all the difference.
This shows it is possible to move from a reactive to a preventive approach. Instead of spending resources repairing damage, investment is made to reduce the impact beforehand. Instead of chasing the water, its behaviour is anticipated.
What is missing is not technical knowledge. What is missing are consistent planning tools, up-to-date modelling, integration between systems, and a medium to long-term vision for managing land and water.
Rainfall will continue, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. The question is simple. Do we want to keep being caught by surprise, or do we want cities that can coexist with water in all its extremes?
The difference starts long before the next storm. And long before the next drought.
