I am writing this text in a place forgotten by the modern urban layout of long avenues, interspersed with roundabouts with statues of historically great figures, but forgotten by current generations.
Here, I am in Paradise on earth, healthily forgotten, where it is possible to see the sunrise on the Ria Formosa, with the faroXNUMX of Santa Maria in the background and the bell of the church of Olhão slightly piercing the noise of free birds who know the world, who know the multiculturalism of Marseilles, but prefer the obtuse calmness of those for whom going to Spain is a memorable adventure.
I don't know Marseille, but I know that this huge city, which is about 1700 kilometers from Faro, it is not as calm for birds and free men as our Ria Formosa.
It has more history and struggle for freedom, or was it not the city where the French anthem became famous in the French Revolution, but it is a noisy city, metropolis and meeting place of many cultures, where noise and social and ethnic upheavals are image branded.
Therefore, sending people from the Airport to Faro to Marseille, under the slogan “Get away from the confusion in the Algarve and rest in France!”, it's not only stupidity, it's misleading advertising.
Nobody chooses the place where they were born. I was lucky to be born in the place I would choose to be born. On Christmas Day 1978, maternity services at the hospital in Olhão would probably be minimal and my mother had no choice but to go to the then Hospital de Faro. Today, I jokingly say that I could only have been born above the Columbus Bar. I was lucky to be born in 1978.
Probably, as I always arrive late or late, if I had been born in August 2019, when I arrived at the current “new” Hospital of Faro, there would no longer be a place for me in the incubator and my mother would have to go to the area of Amadora-Sintra (which curiously is even culturally similar to Marseille), making a trip that would very possibly be fatal to me.
I feel that the real Algarve is forgotten. Worse, it is only remembered by social parties on any television channel or in the various magazines of the socialist Portuguese, or when our politicians and VIPs “go to baths”.
Expression, a little dazed, because it seems that during the rest of the year they don't care about hygiene, something more typical of the period in which we lived in the kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves. The king was the same, but the territory nominally respected geographic autonomy.
I don't know if the solution is the realization of the “comic” MIA (Movement for the Independence of the Algarve) project or the more sensible and politically debatable project of Portuguese regionalization.
But I know that the Algarve cannot be stupid and daily forgotten and remembered only occasionally, almost always for bad reasons during the summer season. Why only on the moon there is no wind. And the wind that is starting to be felt here can interrupt the peace of people who only want to live in human conditions.
Author Father Miguel Neto is director of the Information and Pastoral Ministry of Tourism of the Diocese of Algarve, as well as parish priest of Tavira.
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