The Myth and The Vision

We often hear the story of Jose Rizal and his slippers—how, after losing one slipper, he supposedly threw the other into the river so that whoever finds it would have a pair. A neat little anecdote, repeated in classrooms and inspirational talks. But historians have long debated whether that story has any validity at all. It is charming, yes, but ultimately anecdotal.

And yet, Rizal’s true foresight was not in slipper stories but in his ability to envision solutions to real problems. In the first chapter of El Filibusterismo, as passengers aboard the steamship Tabo traveled from Manila to Laguna via the Pasig River, they complained about the river’s circuitous route, sandbars, and shallow portions that made travel painfully slow.

It was here that Simoun, the jeweler, proposed something radical: 

Dig a canal straight from the entrance of the river to its exit passing by Manila, that is: make a new river channel and close up the old Pasig. Land will be saved, distances shortened and the formation of shoals impeded.

Most of the characters were stunned into silence, so accustomed to patchwork solutions that they could not fathom such a bold idea. But Rizal had already diagnosed what engineers and planners still wrestle with today: the Pasig River cannot carry the burden of Laguna de Bay and Metro Manila’s floods.

A Son of Pasig and the Politics of Flood Projects

Years later, the proposal evolved into the concept of the Parañaque Spillway, meant to give floodwaters a direct path from Laguna de Bay to Manila Bay. And years after that, Mayor Vico Sotto, a son of Pasig—the city named after that very river—would expose how flood control projects became playgrounds for contractors and politicians, reminding us that infrastructure is never just about engineering, but also about governance and integrity.

So we are left with a question: is there something about water that constantly returns to our history, politics, and urban life?

• Water that connects Laguna de Bay to Manila Bay through the fragile, twisting Pasig River.
• Water that floods our streets when projects are delayed, compromised, or abandoned.
• Water that exposes, with every typhoon, our collective failure to plan boldly as Rizal once imagined.

As a real estate broker, appraiser, and someone who reads both the land and its stories, I cannot help but see the parallel: Rizal’s time and ours are bridged by the same river, the same bay, the same lake, the same floodwaters. Perhaps the lesson is clear—until we face the water with vision and courage, it will always come back to test us.

Because the floods do not care about gated subdivisions, city boundaries, or property lines. The water is common. And so should be our resolve.