The current crisis, in its most glaring and worrying dimension, resides not in our collective pockets, but in our heads as a society.
The Algarve, promise of Earthly Paradise in the time of the deceptively fat cows, bastion of the “progress"and "development”, model of economic solidity, and other such mumbo jumbo, with half a dozen shakes collapsed.
With the golden mask crumbling, it revealed all its fragility, thanks to the bet on the monoculture of tourism, and within that, on another monoculture, fueled by real estate and concrete speculation. In between were some lawns and some palm groves. The scarab thanks you.
Instead of this utopia, the record-setting region of unemployment, the region with one of the most fragile productive fabrics, the region with one of the weakest business fabrics, was left.
After all, the magnanimous regional plan of converting all Algarveans and Algarveans into waiters, hotel chamberlains and lawn mowers, although they are professions as noble as any others, has frankly gone wrong!
Immersed in this social drama (we are talking about people, there is no doubt), if there was a touch of dignity and respect, someone would have to be called to account, for having allowed, and often encouraged, that this imbalance could be reached. Not that there are any innocents in the process, as while it looked like there was money, almost everyone went, goofy gay style, behind the airborne castles.
Some tried to warn of the dangers that were incurring, and that it was necessary to have some kind of plan B, which would be convenient to produce something… in short, they were fools, they were fundamentalists, they had no vision. Ant and the Cicada, "allgarve style".
António Vieira warned that blindness that blinds you by closing your eyes is not the greatest blindness; the one that blinds by leaving the eyes open, this is the blindest of all.
But then, it's Portugal, and everything happens by chance, no one has seen it, no one has heard, no one knows anything, neither how nor why, no one is responsible. It's the way forward, and what goes there, goes there.
And, using this clumsy posture, what got us into this mess around continues.
From there, this hollow model will continue to wreak havoc, or at least it tries.
Now in the line of fire is the Lagoa dos Salgados, one of the most important wetlands on the Algarve coast, and one of its few unconcreted sections, where, in addition to the various ecological values present, particularly in terms of habitats and avifauna, biophysical processes fundamental to the equilibrium of this zone occur.
Doesn't the Algarve deserve to have some quality areas, minimally balanced and valuable in ecological terms, without boobs and attacks?
Internationally, it is an area of recognized value, which annually attracts numerous visitors to the region. Isn't this a tourism to cherish and preserve?
And in the name of what, can anyone guess?
More construction, more concrete, more tourist developments and the like! And, of course, in mega style, on a grand scale, everything big that there is no misery here, "structuring","future lever”, thousands and thousands of jobs, adding to all the others that are currently, sadly and unfortunately at the door of the Institute of Employment and Professional Training, password in hand!
No, no one gets a prize because the answer was too predictable...
And, for the skeptics (because there are), who think straight away "but how can this be, when we have thousands of projects on the fly, and closing in the winter, because there is no business, and laying off employees?”, believe that it was only this one that was missing! This is the one that will save everything, and put a Ferrari at the doorstep of all Algarveans and Algarveans!
Or not.
They want to give Lagoa dos Salgados the same bland tone as everything else.
They want to spoil our natural heritage in exchange for empty dreams, investments with no return, local interests.
Everything has its head at a premium in this caricature of the Country. Everything, except what it should have: the model that brought us here, and with which its snake oil sellers continue to wave at us, promising that this is the one, that now yes, we start towards the Eldorado.
When it comes to improving competitiveness, finding new directions for the economy, diversifying sources of income, we have more of the same, when what we need is more, better and different.
Is there no way to get enough?
Author Gonçalo Gomes is a landscape architect
(and writes according to the old Spelling Agreement)
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