Taking care of the living

Lisbon is beautiful and everyone knows that for quite some time now. Few Lisboners can still afford to live in Lisbon though, that is one of the consequences of this general ascertainment. It’s called gentrification in particular and a handful of other more general despicable things (all of them greed based like neoliberalism). I hoped things would change during the pandemic, and possibly stay like that afterwards, as soon as mankind finally realized what is being done to the planet and new generations’ future, for example due to mass tourism; that housing and food prices at least would reverse according to people’s salaries in the country, but it didn’t happen at all. Quite the opposite. A good friend of mine has been looking for a house to rent in the midst of this global crisis and told me of the most appalling lack of offers. Some of the “local accommodations” started offering payable contracts to Lisbon residents at certain point, but till July only, expecting tourists to be back then, of course. The streets are amazingly empty, many restaurants, shops and cafés closed due to bankrupcy, hotel rooms are free, famous sightseeing points are not crowded (it’s a decade at least, since Lisbon looked so much like Lisbon), but still, it feels like investors - for whom the country opened up markets without reserve in previous years (those in which socialists were not in power and the young unemployed were told to emigrate) - are sitting on their profits patiently waiting for the savagery to come back till there’s not a single stone left to sell. Anything but returning the city to its inhabitants.

I am a Lisboner originally, but I rarely felt at home here since an early age. I don’t know exactly where it comes from, this feeling of suffocation. Maybe it’s the chaotic traffic, maybe the narrow streets, maybe the very tangible class war and the weight of privilege for some in town. Perhaps it’s just my very personal family story. Whatever it is, there has always been an air of competition all around that I can’t stand. It’s hard for me to breathe freely and find space for myself. There is nowhere else I have lived where the light and landscape are equally this wonderful and oppressive. There have been many days in the past in which I opened the windows to it but never dared to go out if not at night. And that is very dangerous: to get used to a feeling of incapacity of fighting for daily survival. It became one of the reasons why I decided to leave and learn how to fight better in someplace else. I found out that it is somehow easier not to belong as a foreigner than as a native. 

My internal system tends to crash every time I arrive to my birth place, it’s very common to get sick. Sometimes on nights I can’t fall asleep I even dread the promised repetition of an earthquake followed by a tsunami to sweep up all of this beauty in the morning. In worse years I used to start having nightmares on this topic shortly before flying here. I often end up thinking about our prime minister back in 1755, better known as Marquês de Pombal, who is said to have said, after the great earthquake, fires and tsunami: What now? We bury the dead and heal the living.

I’ve buried too many dead already and the living in need of healing don’t seem to want none of it whatsoever. It looks like I can finally have some quality time for myself when I visit my country and still try to find my own place. Probably not in Lisbon ever again, it won’t be payable anyway. I might always love to meet good friends here, but it’s really not bad to move on from past hurts and present ordeals.

View from local accommodation: the National Pantheon