Entries by Lusolobo

Fire

‘Wildfires, the nightmare we have to live with’ Nine people killed – including three firefighters – and more than 170 injured in wildfires ravaging the central and northern regions of the country; in the districts of Aveiro, Porto, Vila Real, Braga, Viseu and Coimbra. The country’s civil protection service said that last week 54 wildfires […]

Seismic

‘Unfortunately nobody can predict the next earthquake’ On Monday morning August 26 at 05.11 the country was startled by an earthquake 58 kilometres west of Sines, in the district of Setúbal with a magnitude of 5.3 on the Richer scale. No personal or material damage was reported, although there were many phone calls from concerned […]

Forests

There are three European forests which emit more polluting gases than they absorb. One of them is Portuguese. Carbon (CO2) absorption is one of the most essential functions of a forest. But in the last 20 years, three large areas of European forest have failed this important role and are effectively emitting more gases than […]

Protest

‘Life is not all about making money’ Tourism accounts for 10% of the global GDP. The World Tourist Organisation (UNWTO) estimates the number of tourists at 1.5 billion this year. Sooner or later every popular tourist attraction will be confronted with protests from local residents. After anti-tourism protests in Venice, on the Spanish island of […]

Postcolonization-2

‘Repair is recognizing what history has denied us’ Portugal needs ‘to pay the cost’ of slavery and other colonial-era crimes, the country’s president Marcelo da Sousa declared at a recent dinner with foreign journalists. ‘The country takes full responsibility for the wrongs of the past and that those crimes – including colonial massacres – had […]

Postcolonial-1

‘Portugal has a romanticized interpretation of its past.’ Portugal was the European country with the longest historical involvement in the slave trade, kidnapping and forcibly transporting about 6 million African men, women and children across the Atlantic between the 15th and 19th centuries. Although it abolished slavery to the Portuguese mainland in 1761, the trade […]

Leadership

There are numerous terms to describe the wide array of far-right parties and their leaders. They are in one way or the other extreme right, radical right, populist, nativist, ultranationalist, authoritarian, neofascist, illiberal, ‘anti-woke’, anti-Islam, anti-immigration and Euro- and climate-sceptic. The PopuList – an innovative project involving more than 100 political scientists from over 30 […]

Tapestry

A beacon of hope for the preservation of coral reefs An amazing piece of tapestry by Algarve textile artist Vanessa Barragão has been donated by the Portuguese government to the United Nations, which will display it permanently on the wall of the Delegates Lounge at its headquarters in New York. The four-by-two meters artwork, entitled […]

Airfield

‘We leave peace behind and face noise with fear’ After 50 years of delay, the Government has finally decided on the location of Lisbon’s new airport and considered the former Alcochete Shooting Ground (Campo the Tiro Alcochete) the best place to build the new Aeroporto Luis de Camões. An infrastructure which – according to the […]