They make a desert and call it profit – How berry exports are draining Iberia
JOURNALISMFUND.EU Across the southern Iberian Peninsula, plastic greenhouses stretch to the horizon where rain-fed olives, wheat and grapes were traditionally grown. Spain and Portugal are Europe’s main producers of water-intensive berries. But the region is also one of the continent’s driest areas, where droughts are becoming more frequent. Reports have warned Europe’s fruit garden is […]
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Com o ódio à janela
SETENTA E QUATRO (28/1/2022) “Hoje acordámos com o ódio escrito nas nossas janelas.” Foi assim que os donos de uma mercearia árabe em Lisboa denunciaram terem sido alvos de um ataque xenófobo. Numa madrugada de outubro, a mercearia do Médio Oriente Zaytouna (azeitona em árabe) foi vandalizada com uma mensagem ofensiva contra o islão, e […]
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Arabic inscription on Coimbra Cathedral “Greatness will stay”
DEUTSCHE WELLE / QANTARA (18/8/2021) The stones of Coimbra’s twelfth-century cathedral glow in the last rays of sunlight on a warm summer evening. Swallows swirl around the austere building as tourists line up to visit the Romanesque monument in Portugal‘s third largest city. The cathedral’s elaborate three-storey portal in the northern façade attracts many visitors. But […]
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The Portuguese government wants to build a new airport; environmentalists want climate justice
EQUAL TIMES (21/6/2021) Standing on a wooden tripod on a major road leading to Lisbon Airport, a young activist holds a pink flag that depicts an airplane in flames, and raises her clenched fist. “Climate Justice Now!” reads a large banner hanging from a footbridge above the blocked road. Drums and chants echo across roads […]
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The murder of Bruno Candé has put racism – and colonial amnesia – under the spotlight in Portugal
EQUAL TIMES (11/9/2020) On a sunny Saturday in July, Bruno Candé sat, as he did every day, on a bench with his labrador, on a busy street in the Lisbon suburb of Moscavide. At around one in the afternoon Evaristo Marinho, 76, approached Candé with a gun, opened fire and shot him four times at […]
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The Portuguese rediscovering their country’s Muslim past
AL JAZEERA (10/6/2020) When 33-year-old Mustafa Abdulsattar arrived in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, four years ago, something struck him as familiar: many Portuguese words sounded like Arabic. After fleeing war in his native Iraq, Abdulsattar had risked his life on a perilous boat trip from Turkey to Greece. Once in Greece, he was offered resettlement in […]
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How a country in lockdown celebrates freedom
CSMONITOR (24/4/2020) For the past four decades, Col. Vasco Lourenço has spent every April 25 on the streets of Lisbon celebrating Freedom Day. This year will be different. There will be no parades, no concerts, no crowds walking down Freedom Avenue carrying red carnations. In 1974, Colonel Lourenço was one of the young Portuguese officers […]
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Gentrification and grassroots resistance in Amman’s historic district
AL ARABY (3/4/2020) ‘STARBUCKS OPENING SOON’, announces a large billboard placed next to an unfinished building just off the main square of Jabal al-Weibdeh, in central Amman. With no cars on the streets since the Jordanian government implemented a curfew to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the neighbourhood feels unusually quiet. Forced to stay indoors, residents of Weibdeh can’t wait for life […]
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‘Muslims were not foreigners’: Why don’t Portugal’s restitution laws include everyone?
THE NATIONAL (31/3/2020) Mouraria, a trendy neighbourhood in Lisbon’s city centre, still bears the name of its former inhabitants, the Moors – Muslims who lived in the Iberian Peninsula in modern Spain and Portugal, and once walked its maze of narrow and winding streets and tightly packed alleys. Next to Mouraria stands Alfama – from […]
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Os muçulmanos que Portugal expulsou e esqueceu
EXPRESSO (1/2/2020) Brafame Gordo e o seu irmão Galebo partiram do Alentejo tão contrariados que chegaram mesmo a pedir autorização ao rei para os deixar regressar. Numa petição dirigida à coroa portuguesa (hoje guardada na Torre do Tombo) dão o nome de três cristãos seus vizinhos em Elvas, que poderiam fornecer recomendações, e pedem para […]
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