Written by Manuel AM
The icing on the cake of the tragedy of economic crisis (after the hardship, broken families, incapacity to provide) is the depriving of an often overlooked factor of life : meaning and identity. If there ever was a city suffering of a deprived identity on the aftermath of economic crisis, it’s Lisbon.
The easy going, mellow and melancholic character of the Portuguese does not help in this strangely present yet constant sensation that something is off in this city.
Unlike Paris, Berlin or even Barcelona, Lisbon, much like Portugal itself, had been for most of the past 200 years off the main circuits of tourism. A mellow capital with a provincial feeling, its natural charms are in the very elements that give it this now hard-to-describe feeling of uneasiness. The visitor’s first mistake would be to conflate Lisbon, or even Portugal to the broadest sense with the character and feeling of other of southern Europe’s Mediterranean cities. Lisbon is not loud, or bustling, or filled with endless terraces, or even with a very visible street life illustrated by an endless stream of bars and cafes which locals prefer as meeting points as opposed to their own living rooms. No, Lisbon’s beautifully paved and intensely hilly roads, lined with colourful buildings and typical azulejos seem dead. No old ladies sitting in the front of buildings commenting the by-passings of their neighbourhood, no children running after balls pretending to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo. Except in the very central Praça do Comercio area and surroundings, the entire city feels exceedingly mellow.
The few bars that can indeed be found here and there are so scattered apart in areas otherwise completely quiet that the feeling of islands of activity is absolute, and reinforced by the sound levels inside, shockingly lower than even some of Northern Europe’s quietest nations. Nothing to do with Spanish or Italian bars where the ambiance is so loud that one can barely hear oneself thinking.
For the traveller looking for calm and appeasement, Lisbon could be an absolute hit. However, after consulting with many locals, this feeling of uneasiness is not exclusively the nature of the city itself, but in large part a new development due to the explosion of the tourism industry as a response to the economic crisis that struck the country in late 2010 and 2011.
Unlike other major European tourist destinations, Lisbon is not a big city by any stretch. It’s more, the very recent influx of tourists, which according to locals was a result both of the government’s intention to replenish its empty coffers following the brutal economic recession, and a decision by the masses to choose a cheap destination with good weather that would replace the North African nations shaken by the Arab Spring, has led to a further emptying of an already small capital. Lisbon has passed from having 800,000 to 500,000 inhabitants in the last 10 years.
This is all the more striking in the Alfama neighbourhood, Lisbon’s oldest and most iconic. Its tiny crooked and steep streets, lined with old, sometimes charmingly decrepit chaotic structures have an architectural feeling of Naples but without the chaos, even without the people.
Charming, quaint, and quiet yet colourful and quirky. Lisbon leaves these conflicting impressions to the short term traveller. It does not reject abrupt and painfully, like a failed romantic prospect would. Instead it does so with the very same characteristics that the Portuguese seem to display : with a gentle and discreet demeanor.
