Flamingos

Portugal boasts ten official nature reserves

The best places to find flamingos in Portugal is in the Algarve. While flamingos usually do not breed there, they make a stop in the wetlands of Portugal. Throughout the year, they can be seen in the Ria Formosa Natural Park – the impressive wetland spanning over 60 kilometres along the coast between the beaches of Garrão and Manta Rota.

However, the best time to spot them is between November and March. Breeding season takes place between March and July.

The Greater Flamingo – which is the species usually found in the region – prefers to feed in mudflats and shallow lagoons with salt water. These birds use their long legs and webbed feet to stir up the mud and water, creating a muddy soup that they filter through their uniquely adapted bills, which are specially designed to filter out small shrimp, molluscs, seeds, and algae.

As of 2021, the Algarve saw a group of flamingos successfully establish a colony, resulting in the birth of 550 chicks, making it the first successful nesting in the country. The colony began in one of the saltpans of the Castro Marim and Vila Real de Santo António Natural Reserve, located at the mouth of the Guadiana River, bordering Spain.

Although the event hasn’t repeated, the National Forest and Nature Conservation Institute (ICNF) investigates ways to encourage nesting again. ‘It was an atypical year’, explains João Alves, biologist at ICNF. ‘Nature tourism was restricted because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the area where they nested became much more quiet. ‘Remember that flamingos nest in colonies’, he added.

This protected area – spanning over 2,300 hectares – is Portugal’s oldest natural reserve, created 50 years ago. The establishment of the reserve also prompted traditional salt workers to form a cooperative, boosting economic activity in the area. What once was a neglected stretch of salt marches and brackish lagoons is today a thriving habitat, visited by thousands of nature lovers each year.

Except a sanctuary for flamingos, the area is home to over 200 bird species, such as Avocets, Black -winged stilts, Audouin’s gulls, spoonbills and Kentish plovers. Meanwhile, across the border in Spain, Doñana National Park – one of Europe’s most iconic wetlands – is suffering under prolonged drought, giving rise to an unexpected influx of Spanish nature tourists visiting Castro Marim.  

Another significant wetland where pink-feathered flamingos can be admired is the Tagus Estuary, situated near Lisbon, and a vital stopover for migratory birds.

The nearby Sado Estuary, located in the Setubal district, is above all famous for its white storks (and of course dolphins).


Enjoy your week                   Aproveite a semana      (pic Ptres/Público)

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Reopening?

Citizen initiative advocates reopening of the ‘Museum of the Art of the Sick‘

The Lisbon Municipal Assembly recently recommended the City Council to intensify negotiations with the Government for a reopening of the Museum of the Art of the Sick at the former psychiatric hospital Miguel Bombarda, following a petition from the Lx Citizenship Forum.

‘It is a special space that shows the richness of the first Portuguese psychiatric hospital, says one of the petitioners Pedro Janarra, calling for the reopening of the museum in the Security Pavilion – known as the Panopticon – where patients were held who had committed a crime. Inaugurated in 1848, the Miguel Bombarda hospital has been closed since 2011.

The representative of the Citizenship Forum explains that the Panoptic is unique in the world and highlights the presence of ‘more than 15,000 pieces’ of the former psychiatric hospital, with a set of 518 objects in the process of classification to which are added 2400 photographs and manuscripts, as well as an inventory of 18th century tiles in the Noble Hall (Salão Nobre).

It is the third petition of the Forum for the reopening of the museum, with the first being presented in 2014 and the second in 2023, indicated municipal deputy Daniela Serralha, responsible for the civic participation initiative.

Indicating that the former hospital is under patrimonial supervision of the public company Estamo – which took ‘almost a year’ to respond to the request of the Municipal Assembly to visit this public property, finally happening last October – Daniella Serralha states that ‘the allocation of this cultural heritage is planned for housing to affordable rents, including areas of cultural nature.’   


The independent deputy of Citizens For Lisboa (Cidadãos Por Lisboa) adds that it is expected that the Panopticon will be delivered to the City Council ‘with the condition of getting a cultural destination.’ In this regard Daniela Serralha asked the Council for urgency and that pressure be exerted on Estamo to ensure the preservation and maintenance of the heritage.

For his part, deputy Sobreda Antunes of the Ecosocialist party ‘The Greens’ (PEV) warned that ‘given the evident continued disinterest of Estamo, the most predictable will be that the museum and hospital grounds will continue to be abandoned and degrade until it is transformed into any ultra-luxurious hotel unit.’

Enjoy your week                   Aproveite a semana               (pic Público/Sapo)

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Childabuse

Violent crimes against children highest ever

From sexual abuse to grooming, through pornography, rape and sharing of intimate images and harassment: reported sex crimes against children increased almost 50% in a period of three years (2022 – 2024), to a total of more than 5000 crimes, according to the Portuguese Victim Support Association (APAV).

Of these minor victims, 60% were female, and the average age was 11-17 years. In most cases, the father or the mother assume the role of aggressor

‘We are also receiving more cries for help directly coming from children related to sexual violation, in particular online – ranging from cyberbullying and dating violence to the sharing of intimate photos and videos, followed by attempted extortion’ – told Carla Ferreira, technical advisor of APAV, to the daily newspaper Público.

‘The mitigation of risks, obtained when use of smartphones is going to be banned in children under 16 years of age  – as requested in a petition to Parliament –  won’t prevent the child from accessing content to the Internet’, Ferreira explains. ‘The forbidden fruit is always the most desired, especially at these ages,’ she adds.

Although principles of schools – where the use of smartphones is prohibited – report a substantial decrease in the cases of indiscipline and bullying

In its latest Annual Report, APAV reveals that sexual abuse of children, rape and pornography were the ones that registered the highest numbers in 2024.
In sexual abuse the increase was 38%, in rape 20% and in the case of child pornography 14%. Sex crimes were mostly perpetrated by men, either family members or acquaintances of the victim.

Similar figures were released by the National Institute of Health (INE), which in 2024 recorded 3237 violent crimes against children and minors, the highest number ever. Sexual abuse and domestic violence accounted for 32% and 33%, respectively. Men were the ones who committed most crimes, of sexual abuse (94%) and domestic violence (58%).

The good news is that a new risk assessment form for domestic violence is going to include children, that is, the questions that the police officer asks a victim will now include questions aimed at estimating the risk that minors may incur, in addition to the victim.

But, although the new form has already been approved by the Government, it is not yet published in the Diário de República and therefore not officially in force.

Lips
Her face tight of sadness,
without a crease. Her teeth
almost never seen (small as
baby teeth, and just as white). Her mouth
always shut, always fear
in her silence. Someone told that,

one day, a man – her father or her brother,
I don’t know any more – by force had opened
her lips. The other.

Maria do Rosário Pedreira
From her collection: O meu corpo humano (Quetzal, 2022)

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Abortion-2

‘Women who abort in Portugal can still be criminalized for it’

In Portugal, the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVG) carried out by a doctor, in an officially recognized health establishment and with the consent of the pregnant woman, is since 2007 not punishable in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Between 2007 – after the decriminalisation of abortion – and 2024 there were 159 ‘abortion crimes’ registered in the country and 33 convictions related to these cases. The data comes from a recent report by Amnesty International on IVG in Portugal.

The report assumes that these figures, collected from the Directorate-General of Justice, ‘do not allow us to know if the defendants were pregnant women who sought, tried or carried out an interruption or health professionals who may have assisted, tried or carried out these procedures and under what conditions.’

‘But the most important is’ – underlines Inês Subtil – coordinator of the investigation – ‘that a woman who aborts can still be criminalized for it.’
Amnesty Portugal, therefore, recommends total decriminalization of IVG with its withdrawal from the Penal Code and ensuring its application to all people involved – the pregnant woman as well as health professionals assisting them.  

Another fundamental issue the report highlights is the refusal of medical personnel to perform abortion procedures for reasons of conscience. The General Inspection of Health Activities (IGAS) estimates that more than 70% of medical specialists in Obstetrics-Gynaecology – who work at the National Health Service (SNS) – are conscientious objectors to IVG.

This will be one of the reasons why many Portuguese women turn to Spain, where the gestational age limit is higher. The Spanish Ministry of Health declared that in five years (2019-2023), 2525 Portuguese women had their pregnancy interrupted in Spain. In most cases the termination of pregnancy occurred after 10 weeks.

Spain decriminalized abortion in 2010 as long as it is practised within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. The same gestational age limit for legal access to abortion can be found in France and Romania.
In Germany and most other European countries, the term limit is 12 weeks. The longest term limit is in the Netherlands (22 weeks in practice).

Hence that Amnesty Portugal– just as the Socialist Party (PS) in parliament – advocates a revision of the law to extend the current gestational limit of 10 weeks of pregnancy, as it is now one of the most restrictive in Europe.

But with Portugal firmly moving to the right, anyone hoping for changes in the abortion law in this deeply Catholic country has to wait for an indefinite period of time. Just like in euthanasia.

Enjoy your week                   Approveite a semana               (pic Paula Rego)




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Eutanasia

The right to die with dignity

Portugal’s earlier approved euthanasia law – published on the 25th of May, 2023 – is going nowhere.
In fact, it is going ‘’back deep into the drawer’, writes Correio de Manhã, the country’s biggest and most popular newspaper.

According to the approved law, people aged over 18 should be allowed to request assistance in dying if they are terminally ill and in intolerable suffering.
It would only cover those with ‘lasting’ and ‘unbearable’ pain and be applicable to nationals and legal residents only.

However, since the recent May 18 elections, parties in favour of the decriminalisation of medically-assisted death (PS Socialists, IL, BE, Livre e PAN) no longer have the number of MPs required to approve the new law.

Today, the majority of MPs in parliament are those representing AD (an alliance of PSD Social Democrats and CDS Christian Democrats) which has no interest whatsoever in reopening the euthanasia debate whereas the second biggest party – far-right CHEGA – is frontally against the idea.

The euthanasia law was first approved in 2021 in Parliament but never got beyond that – seeing repeated vetoes by both the conservative President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a devout churchgoer and by the Constitutional Court. In a period of four years parliamentarian decisions have been twarted five times.

Moreover, a large number of doctors continues to raise moral objections to carrying out euthanasia, as they do over abortions. Even more poignant in this respect is that palliative care doesn’t get off the ground.

Despite hopeful initiatives, the Palliative Care Association denounced in the beginning of the year that more than 70% of patients do not have timely access to palliation, a value that rises to 90% in the case of children.

With Portugal moving firmly to the right, anyone hoping for a breakthrough in this deeply Catholic country has to wait for an indefinite period of time.

Enjoy your week          Approveite a semana               (pic Público/Sapo)

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Shorties

Language is the door to culture’

The National Education Federation (FNE) is warning of a decline in the Portuguese language education abroad. We are therefore going to discuss Portuguese mini-expressions with only one consonant and the letter ‘a‘.
We’ll travel in alphabetical order; courtesy of Marco Neves.

Bá  Just like that doesn’t exist in the Portuguese language.
In Angola, the dictionary tells us that bá means < amazement or encouragement >
Cá  Means < here > For example: I’ am here ( Estou cá).
Dá  < Give (it to me) > From the verb dar ( to give).

Fá   Is the name of a music note.
Gá   To keep the syllable with the ‘a’ and get a word with meaning, you would have to double it: gagá meaning < weakened, aged >
In Guine-Bissau gã with tilde means < family >
Há   Means < there is > From the verb Haver. In French  < Il y a >
For example: There is bread today ( Há pão hoje).

Já  < Already or right now > For example: I’ am coming ( Vou já).
Lá  < There > For example: There it is ( Lá esta).
Má  < Bad > For example: You are bad ( És má).
Ná  The quick saying of < no > especially in the south of the country.
For example: Don’t say that ( Ná digas isso).

Pá  < Shovel > Also a common popular saying.
For example: Hey man, do you have a cigarette? ( Ó pá, tens um cigarro?) or
Hey man, give me a hug ( Ó pá, dá um abraço).
Rã  < Frog >
Sá  < Healthy > Also a solid surname. For example: Pedro Gomes de Sá.

‘Tá  < Okay > With the apostrophe it is the abbreviation of the word está from the verb estar, that means to be.
For example: Is everything all right (‘Ta tudo bem?).
Vá  < Go! > From the irregular verb ir (to go).
Xá  < Shah > Indeed, the one from Persia. From xáh (king) in Persian.
In northern Mozambique xá means < Oh! > (surprise or admiration).

-> Ká – Qá – Wá and Zá have no meaning in the Portuguese language.     

Enjoy the week                                                 Boa semana

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Rightish

Centre-right wins election as far-right makes record gains

Portugal’s centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) has won the country’s third parliamentary election in three years as the underperforming socialists were left for second place, together with the far-right party Chega (meaning ‘Enough’).

Luís Montenegro, the leader of the AD – that has governed the country since its narrow victory last year – won 32.7% of the vote, taking 89 seats in the country’s 230-seat parliament, leaving it far of the 116 needed for a majority.
The Socialist Party (PS) took 23.4% of the vote to Chega’s 22.6%, tiding the two on 58 seats each.

Votes from abroad, which are to be counted in the coming days, can still put Chega ahead of the Socialist party, which would be the first time in almost forty years that the Socialists do not finish in the top two. In the last election, held 14 months ago, the AD won 80 seats, PS 78 and Chega – led by the former TV football pundit André Ventura – increased its seat count from 12 to 50 in Parliament.

For now, Chega’s delight will be tempered by Montenegro’s explicit refusal to strike any deals with Ventura’s party. ‘Governing with Chega is impossible for three reasons’, the prime minister previously stated. ‘It isn’t reliable in its thinking; it behaves like a political weathervane, always changing its mind, and it’s not suited to the exercise of government.’

The early election was triggered in March after Prime Minister Montenegro used a confidence vote in his minority government to try to head off growing scrutiny questions over his family business activities he founded in 2021 and which he transferred to his wife and sons the following year. But as he failed to win the confidence in Parliament a new election became inevitable.

In the international press terms such as ‘triumph of the conservatives ‘and ‘conservative legislature’ are used to underline the outcome of the ballots.

The British newspaper The Guardian emphasizes the record results of the right and puts into context the emergence of the Chega party, which has grown the most in terms of the number of MP’s. In Spain, El Pais refers to the ‘revolution that took place’ in Portugal which ended with the resignation of the leader of the Socialist Party Pedro Nuno Santos.   

The French paper Le Monde also mentions the ‘major defeat’ of the Socialist Party and the ‘explosive growth’ of Chega. The paper highlights above all ‘the tightening of the migration policy, previously one of the most flexible in Europe under António’s Costa Socialist government. According to Italy’s La Republica, ‘the ultra-right flies, socialists fall’ and Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo reports the re-election of the Prime Minister and ‘sees ultra-right equal socialist seats in left-wing collapse.’  

Enjoy the week            Approveite a semana               (pic Público/Sapo)


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Speak!

‘Another language is another view of life’ (Frederico Fellini)

More than 7000 languages are spoken today. Calculating the part that a language plays in the world is not an easy task. One of the possible ways to calculate the number of speakers is to consider how many people use a language as their mother tongue.

Following this criterion, Mandarin (Chinese) leads the world ranking, followed by Spanish, English, Hindi, Bengali and Portuguese according to data from Ethnologue, a reference that provides detailed information about world languages.

If we count not only the first language but also the second language of the speakers of a given country, Portuguese falls from the 6th to the 7th place, according to the same source.

The first Portuguese text dates from the 17th of June, 1214 and concerns the will of the third King of Portugal, Don Afonso II. Before that time, people always wrote in Latin. Due to the discoveries in the late 14th and early 15th century and the colonial conquests, Portuguese is now spoken on four continents.

The Camões Institute of Cooperation and Language calculated that in eight of the nine Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) – Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor – Portuguese is the official language and spoken by more than 240 million people. There is no data available for Equatorial Guinea.

In addition to the nine CPLP countries, Portuguese is also the official language in Macau – one of China’s special administrative regions since 1999, the other being Hong Kong – but it is estimated that less than 1% of the population uses it as their mother language.

Brazil – a country with 213 million speakers – is by far the largest territory where Portuguese is spoken and within it the many variations that the Brazilian-Portuguese carries. A language in which there are at least three names for the staple food cassava: aipim, mandioca or macaxeira.

The introduction of the Portuguese language in Brazil was fast. In less than two centuries it became the official language of national understanding – after a decree of the Marquis de Pombal in 1758 – overlapping the approximately 1500 indigenous languages that were spoken when the colonizer arrived.

Since the second half of the 17th century in the islands of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire (Dutch Caribbean) Papiamento is spoken. A creole language containing a considerable lexical collection of Portuguese origin, mixed with Dutch and Venezuelan Spanish. It has official language status along with Dutch in the Netherlands Antilles.

Most linguists now believe that Papiamento emerged from the Portuguese-based Creole languages of the West African coast as it has similarities with Cape Verdean and Guinea-Bissau Creole.  

Enjoy the week (of the Portuguese language)                                             Approveite a semana





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51years

From symbol of modern technology during Salazar to symbol of revolution

Fifty-one years on, revolutionary anthems will be sung again on the 25th of April when Portugal celebrates its Carnation Revolution, which in 1974 ended the Estado Novo (New State) of dictator António Oliveira Salazar, Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship of more than forty years.

After an almost bloodless transition, a military junta promptly abandoned the unpopular colonial wars in three African countries (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique) and paved the way for democracy at home.

The carnations delivered 51 years ago to the military in Lisbon’s Largo do Carmo were produced in the Algarve at a time when Guilhermina Madeira was in charge of the CEAT (Tavira Agricultural Experimentation Center).

‘At that time we were the only ones producing carnations in the country. Flowers were sent on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in a truck coming from Vila Real de Santo António to be sold at the Ribeira market in Lisbon’, she recalls.

It must have been there that the carnations were bought to celebrate the first anniversary of the restaurant where Celeste Caeiro worked, the woman who, in order not to spoil the flowers with the closure of the place due to the revolution in the streets, gave them to a soldier who put the carnation into the barrel of his gun.  

‘They were carnations but could also have been tulips or gladioles, also produced at the time in the agrarian post’, Guilhermina, now 79 years old, admits with a smile. ‘Of course, those who made 25 April were the military and all those who fought for freedom but the flower eventually became the symbol of peace and freedom.’

‘In the late 60s all the varieties of flowers we had in the agrarian post were plants that did not exist in the area’, Guilhermina continues. ’The objective was to test the cultivation of the flowers to the conditions in the region’. The carnations – imported from Cap d’Antibes in the south of France – did very well. They were of the ‘American type’ with a large and elegant stem. We had whites, reds, orange and pink ones.’ She still remembers the trade names, from Scania red to Flamingo pink.

What once started as a ‘new technology and a symbol of modernity of Salazar’s Estado Novo with major investments in greenhouses and nurseries in Tavira to stimulate the flower production – which was very underdeveloped in Portugal – ended up becoming a ‘symbol of the end of the regime and the start of the revolution.’  

Enjoy the party                     Aproveite a festa          (pic Público/Sapo)









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Poetic

‘Doctors – like poets – need to be in touch with their feelings’

The poet João Luis Barreto Guimarães (1967) is a breast cancer surgeon, who uses poetry alongside medicine to help trainee doctors empathize with their patients.

In 1989 he made his literary debut with the collection Há Violinos na Tribo (The Tribe has Violins). In 2020, the English version of his bundle of poems Mediterrãneo was awarded the Willow Run Poetry Book Award in the USA. He was the first author of non-American origin to receive this honour. In Portugal, he received the Pessoa prize in 2022 in recognition of his contribution to the arts.

‘Poetry has a unique capacity to help students connect holistically with their future patients, as opposed to viewing them as a medical problem in need of fixing’, explains the 56-year-old surgeon to the Guardian.

‘Doctors often don’t have time to stop and think, so everything quickly gets reduced to the technical and mechanical. What I try to convey to students is that – as with a poem – each of their patients is unique,’ he emphasizes.

For his poetry course, Guimarães obtains his material from the British publisher Bloodaxe Books, to ensure every class has at least a handful of poems that link to medicine. Poems about doctor-patient scenarios or familiar healthcare settings offer students an easy bridge to their medical study. ‘I get students to look at poems that talk about empathy, compassion and solidarity.’

The reading list includes well-known poet-medics, like Júlio Denis (Portuguese surgeon), William Carlos Williams (American paediatrician), Gottfried Benn (German pathologist) and Miroslav Holub (Czech immunologist).    

Guimarães’s teaching is not limited to the most accomplished poets. He is a keen advocate of exposing students to the ‘evil’ of excessive sentimentalism, a habit they should avoid once they go to patients in the wards.

Since launching the course, Guimarães has received various requests to teach at other medical faculties across Portugal. Nor is he alone, Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University recently introduced a course in literature for its second-year medical students.

The poem Meditação (Contemplation) is from the collection Voçe está aqui (You are here, 2013)

The afternoon: I spent watching the war
on television. None of us are
missing
while in those places the missing are counted.
No one
of our generation was in the revolution. Others
(before us)
waged our wars (by the time
we arrived the war was over
when we came to fight
the dictator had fallen). The only thing
left for us was a
different kind of battles (lifting each
morning
the immense weight of your eyelids)
running for a place in the trench
of the bar.
All afternoon I watched the war
on the television (on this side of the
screen there is no hunger
nor cold).

Enjoy your week                                               Approveite a semana     







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