Big fires are always a sign of serious dysfunction in a country's long history. Once again, tragedy befell the most disadvantaged. Until the next episode.
I am not going to comment on recent events in the central region, a head-on collision between people and forest and a direct consequence of the development model pursued in recent decades. It is this long-standing “non-model” that this chronicle focuses on.
On two occasions, in 2015, I spoke about “our development model”: in the Observador newspaper on 25.08.2015 with the article “Interiorissimo: the network territories of the great country of the interior” and on 16.12.2015 in the Público newspaper with the article “The development of the interior and the territorial contracts CIM/NUTSIII”.
This is a chronicle about forgetting and invisibility.
Unfortunately, “territories that burn do not exist”, or rather, “only exist because they burn”. The invisibility of the interior territories allows for almost anything, even the almost total abandonment, as is now being shown. “Since they do not exist” there is no exercise of territorial intelligibility on them; one gets there almost always in a state of emergency and on the brink of the abyss, as has happened now.
Unfortunately, faced with the great spectacle on television, the visibility of tragedy is only paralleled by the invisibility of abandonment. The intrusion is such that we are left with the feeling that the fire has broken out several times.
Unfortunately, in a long-standing bipolar country, almost everything depends on the Central State or the Local State. I mean, “there's a lot that has to remain invisibility” because there's simply not enough resources for everything. And those who remain invisible are those who do not disturb the calmness of the established corporate and clientele system.
The interior of the country is not part of this clientele system or is only marginally part of it to "shush" some local baron with the loudest voice and, therefore, also with greater access and political visibility.
Unfortunately, fires of this magnitude have the serious inconvenience of bringing to the surface the “undead” of oblivion. His long invisibility, which only fires disturb, hides a long-announced death. It is a noisy, cynical and cowardly silence that hides behind countless protective curtains; in this way, the central power hopes to be able to “manage more rationally” its scarce resources; according to their logic, without visibility, it is easier to manage scarce resources and distribute prebends right away to those who have greater visibility.
Unfortunately, territories also collapse, because these territories have been “silently and patiently deterritorialized”. It is a bipolar country for a long time, it is the omissions of the State-administration, it is district capitals completely bent on Lisbon's centralism, it is, after all, a country without a backbone.
Unfortunately, this is just another episode because the convergence of climate change, demographic change and agro-industrial monocultures prepares "the path of abandonment" so that these territories are "finally captured" without it being necessary to prepare their privatization for this. .
Unfortunately, in such a small country, where all territories, even the most remote ones, have distinctive signs and expectant resources, it is a crime against the homeland not to carry out an intelligibility exercise on these signs and resources, bringing them into the light of day, launching them in the regional and national public space, giving them the visibility that is necessary and all this in a “climate of perfect normality”.
Unfortunately, the Lilliputian universe of our small towns in the interior is a difficult terrain for the formation of stronger and more muscular self-governing communities.
Fortunately, I don't have ready-to-use solutions. I have only the hope of common sense and common sense tells me that the creation of “intermunicipal communities”, placed between the local and regional levels, is an excellent pretext to reconsider the entire territorial policy of valuing the interior; that the triangulation of these communities with polytechnics and business associations is a good exercise in territorial intelligibility; that CIM/NUTS III territorial contracts are a good programming and planning tool; that a network actor and dedicated governance are two essential factors for good performance, as there is only competence if there is permanence.
But unfortunately this is just my opinion.
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