Massive Demonstration on March 12, "A Generation at Risk"

Lisbon has certainly been exciting lately!  Today the metro opened late because of strikes (second time this has happened to us this spring).  We took the bus instead, but it's a sign of the discontent that is everywhere in Portugal during a crise ("the crisis").

On Saturday, we marched in the massive "Geração a Rasca" demonstration with our history prof, Alice Samara, her husband Tiago, and other friends from the the university. The protest was all organized on Facebook and new media, it was not sponsored by any of the traditional political parties or unions, and many of the participants were probably drawn because of that fact (they don't see themselves as "political").  And it drew out somewhere between 200,000-300,000 people in 12 cities across Portugal, which is a sizable chunk of the total population.  Between one and two hundred thousand people joined the LIsbon protest alone.

Tiago, Zeke, Alice, Rafi, and Michael hit the streets

The term "generation at risk" (also known as precarioso, of "precarious") refers to young adults who are unable to get jobs after graduation, or who have temp jobs without benefits or security--part of the so-called "flexible economy."  There's a lot of concern that they can't leave home and get their own apartments, that everything is on hold because of the financial crisis, and no one knows if they will ever be able to lead "normal" lives.

Many people wore shirts with a checklist of "at risk" or "precarious" conditions.  The guy in the photo below is wearing one.  It reads: "I am:  an intern, a scholarship student, intermittently employed, on a short-term contract, a teacher, a working student, an immigrant, an independent contractor with crummy social security, unemployed, childcare worker, employed below my credentials, about to emigrate, a temp...I am precarious, but inflexible!"

Precarious...but not taking it anymore!

In fact, many of the participants in the march on Saturday were parents of young adults--many of them held signs saying things like "Mother-at-risk of a recent-PhD-at-risk-living-at-home."  And plenty of pensioners joined the fun, too--people started talking about "Gerações a Rasca" ("Generations at risk"). I think that the "generation" talk is about the fear that this generation will not see the rising standard of living that the Portuguese experienced from 1974 until about 2001, when Portugal hit its first post-dictatorship recession.

There were not one but two big protest-pop songs being sung in the streets. There was a group called the Homens de Luta ("Protest People"), which started out as a comedy act, a cross between the Village People (very popular in Portugal) and a protest singer from the 1974 Revolution (the one that brought down the Salazar dictatorship).  They hope to compete in the Eurovision Song contest, bringing the Portuguese people's message to the good burghers of Dusseldorf, where the 2011 contest will be held.  Some folks wonder if they will get thrown out for being too political.  We also heard the Deolinda song, "Que parva que eu sou"("What a dummy I am"), retooled as a drum corps chant--powerful stuff!

Next Saturday, the major trade unions and Portuguese Communist Party (this is one of the major parties here, not a tiny organization) will be holding demonstrations--it will be interesting to see how it goes, and how much overlap there is with this new-media-inspired "Generation at Risk."

Museu do Fado

We went to the Fado Museum in Alfama last weekend and saw displays on the history of Fado and listened to recordings by the greats. Zeke and Rafi liked it a lot, especially the recordings and the seamy side of pre-Salazar Fado life. Krista has a well-developed interpretation of the current meaning and viability of Fado, which I'll leave to her in another post.

A visit from Uncle Garrett!

This past week, Michael's brother Garrett came to stay with us for a few days.  Garrett was over in England giving a presentation about the NGO he co-founded, Running Across Borders, which supports training and education for competitive runners in Ethiopia.  So after that, he stopped in.  Whenever Garrett visits, he finds a way to squeeze in his daily 14-mile run.  In Lisbon, he did this by running around the city in the wee hours of the night when there are hardly any cars out.  Pretty wacky!
Some photos from his visit...

On the #28 trolley

Up at Castelo São Jorge

Also at Castelo São Jorge

When you run 14 miles a day, go ahead and indulge in a pastel de Belém

Sunset on the Tejo, Belém

At the Torre de Belém at sunset

This morning Garrett flew home to the States.  It was a short but very fun visit--thanks for coming to see us, Uncle Garrett!

And a castle in a the Tejo River

On our way home from Tomar, we stopped by the Castle of Almourol, which is smack-dab in the middle of the Tejo River.  It can only be reached by boat!  It was built during the period when the Portuguese were slugging it out with the Muslim emirs, and for a long time, the Tejo was a key natural boundary. Here are some photos from our visit...

Zeke and Rafi on the little launch

Zeke at Almourol

The view from the top of the tower

Krista at Almourol Castle

Rafi studies the Tejo

Tomar's Temple

In addition to the fortified church built by the Knights Templar, Tomar has one of Portugal's few synagogues, which we visited.

Michael and the boys in front of Tomar's tiny synagogue

Jews lived in Portugal from at least the 5th century, but maybe even as far back as the Roman times.  The Visigoths, who were early Christians, gave them a hard time back then.  Things got a lot better for the Jewish population after the Muslims invaded in 711, as long as they paid their taxes to the caliphate.  The Christian kings from the northern part of the country kicked out the Moorish emirates in the 12th and 13th century, and Portugal became a Christian kingdom with large populations of Muslims and Jews, especially in the central and southern parts of the country.  Under these kings, Portugal's Jews continued to have important roles in cultural life and education, politics, and commerce, and there were especially large communities in Evora and Lisbon, as well as smaller communities in villages and smaller cities like Tomar.

All this changed 1497, when King Manuel I (the guy who gave the "Manueline" architectural style its name) ordered Portugal's Jews either to convert to Christianity or get out of Iberia (since Ferdinand and Isabela were the ones who started the whole trend in Spain).  over the next 140 years, there was a Portuguese Inquisition, with many waves of massacres and forced deportations.  Many Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands (like philosopher Baruch Spinoza), England (like the ancestors of classical economist David Ricardo), Greece, Brazil, and other countries.  Some practiced in hiding as marranos, while presenting themselves as Catholics in everyday life.  Accusing someone of being a marrano appears to have been an handy way to get one's enemies jailed, deported, or executed.  Jews pretty much stayed away from Portugal until the late 19th century, when some Jewish businessmen from Brazil came to live in Lisbon and other cities.  That's why Lisbon's synagogue was built in 1904.

So, after 1497, Tomar's temple was no longer used as a synagogue.  Over the centuries, it was used as a jail, a chapel, a hayloft, and a storeroom.  In the 1920s, a Jewish engineer from Poland named Samuel Schwarz was working in Portugal and started collecting Portuguese Judaica--fragments of headstones and stone plaques with Hebrew letters.  He also bought the building in Tomar, had it excavated, and established it as a museum.  Today, the museum continues, and the building is sometimes used for synagogue services for international visitors.

More documents of our walk at Conimbriga (Roman site near Coimbra)

Here are the entry badges of Krista and our new friend Emma for the walk at Conimbriga. The check marks, red on Emma's and blue on Krista's indicate, "Bottle of local wine and rounds of local cheese have been received." And they were, with pleasure. (The boys received wine and cheese too.)

Tomar's Templars

On Monday, we took advantage of the long weekend, a sunny day, and our landlady's car and took a day trip to the little town of Tomar, about two hours' drive northeast of Lisbon.  Once we got through the Lisbon metropolitan area, our drive took us through a landscape of little hills with olive groves, cow pastures, and the occasional vineyard.  We arrived in Tomar at the opening time of the main sight, the Convento de Cristo of the Knights Templar.

Inside the rotunda, the oldest part of the monument

The octagonal rotunda of the church was built by the Knights Templar in the late 1100s.  They were a monastic military order, which is quite a concept to try to wrap your head around.  Basically, they were a group of tough guys who formed the organization in about 1130 to fight in the Crusades, and they agreed to take vows of chastity and poverty.    Later, they added the task of protecting pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.  But after about two centuries of collecting rewards in the form of landholdings and protection money, the Knights Templar grew very rich.   Because they had both money and a trans-European network extending from the British Isles to the Holy Land, they became the "American Express" and Lehman Brothers of the Middle Ages--issuing both travelers' cheques and the transfer of funds across Europe.  They gave out big loans to the merchants and kings of Europe, and they had enough money to build beautiful convents like the one at Tomar all over the continent.

The guys outside the convent; oldest part is behind them

 Eventually, the kings of Europe came to see these militarized Christian bankers as a threat to their power.  The French and English kings decided to burn them at the stake in the early 1300s, and many of the Knights fled to relative safety in Tomar, Portugal.  

King Dinis of Portugal then did something pretty tricky--he renamed the order (to the "Order of Christ") and claimed it as a royal order.  This meant that instead of handing over the Templars' assets to the Church in Rome, the Portuguese throne largely controlled the Templars' assets.  This had important effects: in 1417, Prince Henry the Navigator was named the Grand Master of the Order, and he used the Order's assets to fund his navigation school at Sagres and the early Portuguese sea voyages that claimed the Azores and Madeira Islands and sailed far down the coast of west Africa.  

Rafi and the ornate Manueline window

And the spiral staircase!

We really liked the spiral staircase!

After Henry's death, other Portuguese royals used the Order's money to finance sea voyages around Africa, to India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Brazil.  So basically, this church represents the financial empire that led to the colonization of people on three continents.  And now, it's a tourist attraction in a sleepy Portuguese town.  Being here really does make you tend to think about history in the longue durée.

Orange trees and orange tights in the Alfama

On Sunday we all went for a walk in the Alfama, the area clinging to the steep hill between Lisbon's Sé (Cathedral) and the Tejo riverfront.  On the sidestreet next to the Cathedral walls, we tried to pick some oranges from the street trees, but others had beaten us to the low-hanging fruit!

No luck for Michael and Rafi!

Later, we spotted a young couple who had a great look going: the guy in a green tweed jacket with chalk inscription ("fetra": not a Portuguese word, what does it all mean?) and the girl in orange tights and cobalt blue patent-leather shoes, with an enormous cloth flower pinned in her hair.

It was a good look!

The local aqueduct and cistern

On Saturday, looking for fun things to do with the boys, we visited the "Museum of Water" near our house and saw the impressive Mãe de Agua cistern.

The cistern was built during Lisbon's great urban reconstruction in the period following the 1755 earthquake and tsunami that leveled much of the low parts of the city.  The aqueduct dates from the late 1700s as well.

This whole complex is part of a beautiful mid-sized park near our apartment, just across the street from the shop where the boys are taking piano lessons.  Lovely Lisboa!

The big hike

The last weekend in February, after visiting Coimbra, we woke up early and went on a hike in the hills with our new friends Marta and Pedro and their buddies. 

L to R: Marta, Michael, Krista, Rafi, Emma, Pedro, João, and Lawrence

We met Marta a few weeks ago when we were searching for the same geocache in our neighborhood in Lisbon.  She is Spanish but studied on the Erasmus exchange program in Coimbra.  Now she lives and works in Portugal and is engaged to Pedro, who teaches environmental studies at the University of Coimbra.  Their friends included João, Ilya, a Russo-French architect, and Emma and Lawrence, two Brits who have moved to the village abutting the Roman ruins at Conimbriga. 

The hike was organized by a Portuguese running association, and many of the participants were actually running a 30-km cross-country race. We opted for the 14 km hike instead, but we were a little worried because we didn't know if the boys could handle a 9-mile hike!  But Zeke and Rafi looked so professional with their official t-shirts andfcc race numbers, we figured we could give it a try.

Zeke and Rafi hiking through Conimbriga Roman ruins

Our hike started in the town square of Condeixa and then passed through the ruins of a Roman city.  after that, the trail led us over a small pass into the next valley.  We walked through olive groves along a small river.

Brothers on the road

We passed through a village and saw this beautiful tile sign, which let us know that we had been walking on the Caminho de Santiago, the Portuguese road leading to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the relics of St. James are buried.  In other words, this trail is part of a trans-European travel route dating back to the 12th century!

Note the seashell motif on the tiles: the symbol of St. James

Of course, the Portuguese part of this network is just one of many spokes from all around Europe.

A map of the paths leading to Santiago de Compostela

Still, it's interesting to imagine the pilgrims, like the travelers in the Canterbury Tales, who have been walking this network of paths for centuries.  The route through northwestern Spain is enjoying a renewed popularity with tourists, though they're mostly secular these days.

Pedro and Michael take a break in the second village

 The nice thing about going on a hike organized by a Portuguese club is that they call up the village cultural and sports associations and get them to greet the hikers  with not only water bottles and orange slices, but also with fresh bread, local cheeses, and wine!

The finish line!

 And after hiking over nine miles, we crossed the finish line and everyone received a bag with a bottle of red wine and two sheep's milk cheeses.  Yum!  the boys were very proud of their accomplishment, and we were proud of them, too.

After the hike, Emma and Lawrence hosted the whole group for lunch at their restored house in the village next to Conimbriga.  It was a fabulous day.

Portugal dos Pequenitos!

On Saturday we went to Portugal dos Pequenitos (Little Guys' Portugal) in Coimbra.  It is a children's park that has replicas of all the most important buildings and vernacular architecture styles in Portugal, and the kids can walk around and clamber on the little buildings.  It is seriously cute!

All the major buildings of Lisbon and Belém, in one convenient place!

Zeke on the steps of the National Theatre of Pequenitos

The Palace of Mateus, after a hot-water wash cycle?

The peasants here look so happy...

Rafi actually smiling because he just sold this house to a Portuguese kid who does not suspect that he's not really a professional real estate agent. 

Portugal dos Pequenitos was originally built during the Salazar dictatorship years, and it has a section with pavilions representing the former Portuguese colonies.  At the time these were built, they were presented in terms of Portugal's civilizing mission in the "overseas provinces" of the Portuguese empire--you can see this in the old plaques that are on display inside the pavilions.  Recently, this area was updated somewhat as the "PALOP" area (Países de Lingua Official Portuguesa).  The new signs outside the pavilions give the dates of the anti-colonial independence revolutions, and the purpose of the exhibition has been reframed in terms of multiculturalism and understanding the differences and similarities among people in the Lusophone countries.  Still, when you're in Portugal, everywhere you look, there's a sense of colonial nostalgia for the days of the Treaty of Tordesillas, when the Pope drew a line on a map, splitting up the world between Spain and Portugal.  Really, Portugal hasn't quite figured out how to reimagine itself as a nation, now that it is a small European country that has no colonies but does have an ex-colony (Brazil) that is quickly overtaking the language and Lusophone media.