These two images, captured on November 1, 2024, and October 18, 2025, respectively, show Sant Josep Street in the town of Paiporta, Valencia.

In the photograph on the left, Ismael Bravo Castelló, tries to enter his home, blocked by a car and debris piled up by the flood. The vast majority of the houses on his street were flooded with endless mud. Ismael says he managed to rescue some elderly neighbors who were alone; others were never found. Cars crashed into the facades preventing access to or exit from the homes. The grief and pain of Sant Josep Street, after so many losses, was overcome with brooms to clear the mud and the piling up of mud soaked household items.

A year later, the same street appears clean and completely cleared. The damaged shutters have been replaced and the doors and windows repaired. 

The terrible floods of October 29, 2024 caused serious damage in nearly 80 municipalities, the vast majority of them in the Valencia region. There, the DANA left devastating consequences: more than 200 people died, in addition to significant damage to homes and other infrastructure. The economic losses were colossal. 

The violent flood, which caused the Barranco del Poyo ravine to overflow, inundated Paiporta and other towns such as Alfafar, Catarroja, and Massanassa, destroying everything in its path. According to the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET), in the town of Chiva (Valencia), 491 liters of water per square meter were recorded in just eight hours, which is equivalent to a year’s worth of rainfall. 

The meteorological phenomenon known as DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, or isolated high-level depression), or cold drop, occurs when a mass of warm air from the Mediterranean Sea merges with another mass of cold air from the polar regions, causing unstable conditions and generating extreme weather events.

If you want to know more about the consequences of the DANA, we recommend the reports The water took everything away and No one arrived on time.

2024: Pablo Tosco
2025: Pablo Tosco