Opinion (José Lúcio / Judge): Alentejo, Alentejo!
The large public investment in the Alentejo region in the last century was the Alqueva dam. Seriously suspect that only made here because they could not make it in Lisbon.
José Lúcio
(Judge President of Beja County)
The outburst is the purpose of indignation environment that you live around here. The Alentejo feel they are neglected by the central government, because they are few and almost irrelevant in electoral terms.
I seem to exaggerate that feeling of humiliation and powerlessness. The abandonment and contempt with which the central power comes Alentejo highlight every new policy option.
Are this time focused on the problems of saturation of the Lisbon Airport, and the consequent need for the country to have a new airport. Because the result has been impressive: spent up hundreds of millions in a phantasmic Ota Airport, spend up millions more in controversies and studies on airports to do in Rio Frio or Montijo.
Every effort of the responsible entities seems to focus on a single point: Beja is not. The airport is made up, bummer – é um problema difÃcil de resolver. But when they talk about this issue they want to refer to the difficulty in finding the way to the final closure, not the way of the harness and viable - this is not.
Debate is now particularly acute the question of railways. I, I'm not old, met trains linking Portalegre and Estremoz, Évora and Reguengos, Évora and Mora, Beja and Serpa, etc. I could travel-from the Northern Alentejo to the Algarve always train. I walked between Portalegre, Estremoz, Évora, Viana, Cuba, Beja ... this time are no longer just the old branches that have been abandoned. To the line leading to the Algarve is at risk of complete closure.
Equating this problem seriously, it must be stated that it is not just Beja is the prospect of being without trains - is a third of the country in which ostensibly leaves out the rail option. And it will certainly not for the region is privileged to road level, because the truth is that there is no railway roads are also a misery.
What has been done in recent decades to fulfill the promises of the IP8 or IP2? are decades, gentlemen!
When I was in Portalegre (city ​​that is particularly dear to me) have stemmed, announced with pomp, tenders and contracts aimed realize the IP2. For today, past thirty years, there is no IP to connect the three major cities Alentejo. In such long stretches the main route creeps by the old national roads, painfully through the cities as in Estremoz and Évora (St. John of God Avenue is a national road you have to go all the car traffic, light and heavy - and even has the unique distinction of crossing a Hospital through).
The great works implemented in the road plan are two highways that cross the Alentejo, a side to side and up and down another. Looking at them is not necessary to deceive. One was made to the Spanish can comfortably visit Lisbon and Lisbon can quickly take a leap to Madrid, and the other was built for vacationers North and alfacinha region can no disorders reach the Algarve. In either case, without annoying stops in Alentejo.
Outside of these two such highways, for strangers make the desert crossings, the rest of the road network in the region accuses the abandonment. It is a scandal verify the conditions of traveling between Beja and Moura, or between Beja and Odemira, or going Evora Sines.
Say clearly: every new torrent of speeches on desertification of the interior has been invariably followed the announcement of anything else that will close. And closing all can not expect people here to continue. In the most recent municipal elections found that only district of Beja we have two municipalities with less than one thousand voters. I come from a land that should have more people in Switzerland than in the village.
Whoever is able to imagine what this means, Think the future. The past does not encourage. The Alqueva Dam I mentioned at the beginning was designed and presented to the public even in the fifties of the twentieth century (the engineers Rafael Manuel Amaro da Costa and Armando da Palma Carlos, if memory serves me). It took the many decades that followed. The watering schedule Alentejo, ambitious and massive project outlined at that time, essential parts continue to perform. The linchpin of the system in Portalegre district would be the dam Pisão, the great reservoir to serve this vast area. As someone reminded me the other day, It is promised seventy years ago. There is not at this point the prospect of when it will come to be actually built.
Portalegre still remember the example of the education center squares of GNR, who still works there. Occasionally appears in the news proclaimed the intention of the transfer to the Lisbon area. As if in Fine Queluz or the installation of this unit was essential, and instead in Portalegre not assume decisive importance for maintaining. I have to say does not surprise me. In a country that wished balanced would be normal that housed barracks in the capital were moved to the depressed areas of the interior, with us to this vital institution to keep some life in Portalegre (land where everything was closing, textile cork) now threatens to walk away.
I'll finish, the speech will long. A friend given to irony told me for years, a time in which he praised the beauty and harmony of the Alentejo and the preservation of appearance that everything kept here, not it strange that since we are not doing anything here there are five hundred years. after years, I have to say that distresses me this look - everything seems outwardly maintain the same serene stillness, the whitewashed houses and the tranquil villages, but inside I'm afraid increasingly see installed emptiness and ruin.
(Text written under the previous rule to spell AO1990, by the author's option)
