This Morning...
This morning I woke feeling unusually refreshed and, why not admit it, genuinely happy after a long and peaceful night's sleep. Most likely because of the news announced the previous day, promising to reshape Portugal over the next quarter of a century.
I must admit I was caught by surprise by the depth, detail and political and social consensus behind the measures that had been announced, despite the signs that had been emerging over recent weeks. The image of a small snowball beginning its descent down a hillside, gradually growing into an avalanche capable of transforming an entire country, struck me as remarkably apt.
I finished my first coffee of the morning and, before leaving the house, looked out of the window. The street was exactly as it always is. People were quietly going about their daily routines, seemingly unaware of the significance of those announcements. I smiled. Perhaps no one had yet realised that, if everything I had read were ever to become reality, Portugal might finally begin to think of itself as a long-term national project.
I left home and started my short walk to the office. It is not a long journey, yet that morning it seemed more than enough to imagine a different country.
As I walked, I paused for a moment beside a building I have known for many years. It had once been a private school, later became a university campus, and today serves as an auxiliary health centre. I continued past the local hospital before reaching the town square, where fruit and vegetables from the surrounding countryside have been sold every day for generations. It made me reflect on the marks that time leaves on the way we organise and manage our territory.
To me, recognising territorial planning as one of the defining strategic choices of a nation was the true turning point. For much of the twentieth century, we quietly accepted the steady movement of people, businesses and public services towards the coast, while the country's interior gradually lost population, opportunities and economic vitality. For the first time, it seemed possible to imagine reversing that trend.
My thoughts turned to the Lisbon earthquake of November 1755 and, more recently, to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Not because I dwell on catastrophes, but because a country whose people, services and economic activity are excessively concentrated inevitably becomes more vulnerable. Distributing population, economic activity and public services more evenly across the country would no longer be simply a question of territorial cohesion. It would become a strategic decision about the kind of country we want to build and the way we choose to prepare for the future.
I carried on walking along one of the busiest streets in town and stopped for a moment. On my left stood the Land Registry Office, which has since moved to another location. On my right was the former court archive, now almost deserted as a consequence of the digitalisation of official records. I could not help wondering about the impact that the centralisation of public services has on people's everyday lives, while questioning whether greater efficiency is always experienced as genuine improvement by those who depend on those services.
It seemed only natural to me that such a vision should begin with the fundamental pillars of society. Healthcare, education, justice, public safety and culture would no longer be concentrated so heavily in the country's largest urban centres, strengthening instead the role of many inland cities and towns. At the same time, administrative simplification, reduced bureaucracy and the successful digital transformation of the State would bring public services closer to citizens and provide the consistency needed to support such a transformation.
As I walked past the bus station, alive with the usual bustle of the morning, and continued towards the railway station, almost deserted and still lacking a reliable and consistent rail service, I found myself thinking about mobility.
A truly national rail network, complemented by local transport solutions, would bring regions closer together, reduce travelling times and lessen the environmental impact of everyday journeys. More than a revolution in transport, it would represent a revolution in quality of life, giving people back something that has become increasingly scarce: time.
As I left the park by the tennis courts, I found myself looking once again at a derelict building that has stood there, empty and for sale, for decades. I even marketed it myself for a time, until someone decided that a different course should be taken. Apparently, that course led nowhere.
It reminded me of the role industry once played in the development of the town and the surrounding region, and of the impact caused by its slow, and perhaps painful, decline. It occurred to me that none of these pillars could endure without an economy capable of supporting them. Encouraging businesses to establish themselves inland, together with the decentralisation of Portugal's largest companies, would create wealth, skilled employment and new opportunities for thousands of families.
By the time I was approaching the office, walking along the street that runs parallel to the railway line, my attention turned to the built environment once again. Small abandoned houses, former family homes of one or two storeys, old schools and more recent apartment buildings—now at least fifty years old—whose height no longer seems in keeping with the city's present-day character and which increasingly reveal the challenges of ageing and maintenance.
Almost without realising it, I had returned to the subject I know best: housing and urban regeneration.
Naturally, housing also found its place within this vision. Not as an isolated problem demanding isolated solutions, but as part of a broader national strategy. Regenerating the existing housing stock, encouraging new construction where it is genuinely needed, and strengthening local construction companies would cease to be independent objectives and instead become part of a common purpose: building a more balanced country.
After all, construction has always been one of the driving forces of the Portuguese economy.
I switched on my computer and searched once again for the previous day's news, wanting to read it more carefully.
It was not there.
Instead, I found the same succession of disconnected ideas, detached from one another and devoid of any coherent, long-term vision.
All that remained was the fleeting satisfaction—lasting no more than three quarters of an hour—of having believed that Portugal could truly become a different country.