campo de ourique in loco
VIVA CAMPO DE OURIQUE text miguel sousa tavares · photography evelyn kahn
“A neighbourhood that’s worth living in has to start like this: with a market that is a feast for the senses, a return to the tastes and the smells we grew up with.”
cult restaurants, its eccentrics and nutcases familar
And, after all, this truly rare example of urban harmony
to one and all. Other things it doesn’t have and much
and quality of life doesn’t need any big construction
of the pleasure of walking its streets is down to their
landmarks, no eye-catching housing development,
absence: tall buildings with chauvinistic facades, door-
no shopping centre (on the contrary, the secret is not
men and security guards, traffic police trying to make
having one), no municipal swimming pool or sports
life impossible. It is as if the public roads are self-
pavilion, no traffic circle with flowerbeds and pseudo-
regulated, via a natural sense of community, in which
modern statues, nothing, in short, that grabs the at-
everybody leaves everybody else alone and all authority
tention and shouts public funds or private fortunes.
becomes worthless thanks to the mutual respect for
Merely good sense, balance and human proportions.
the liberty of each individual. The best example of this
The people do the rest: they stroll down the street
spirit of mutual freedom and tolerance that I have wit-
without a care or a worry, stop to chat at shop doors,
nessed here is an example of extreme political incor-
greet each other on the street corners, take the chil-
rectness, which took place early one morning, in the
dren, old people and dogs for walks, meet their lovers
café where I always have breakfast. A lady, a regular
or read the newspaper in pavement cafés, lunch at the
customer, ordered a coffee and lit up a cigarette. At
appropriate hour at their habitual tables in one of the
that moment, an individual that I had never seen there
little restaurants, in a word, they live the city, they don’t
before and never would again, straightened up and,
limit themselves to suffering it or pass it by. For sure it
full of newly-acquired familiarity, blurted: “Madam,
is also home to sad, lonely people living horrible lives.
the smell of your cigarette is disturbing me!” And she,
But at least the street doesn’t harm them: it comforts
without so much as turning, answered, loudly and
them, distracts them, above all, it gives them a sense
clearly: “Your smell is disturbing me too, but I thought
of belonging to a community – which today is a thing
it best not to mention it.” And at that the intruder left,
as rare and as precious in a city as the fish, the fruit
with his tail between his legs and amid the smirks
and the vegetables in the Campo de Ourique market.
of the locals (yes, I know, a bunch of ignoramuses!).
I know that this text might seem a bit absurd in the
I am aware of how much Campo de Ourique (I don’t
midst of the eternal agitation in which we live. But it is
know whether by spontaneous gestation or because
a debt of gratitude to “my” neighbourhood that I had to
someone planned and foresaw it that way) is a model
settle one day. And also, while we are at it, it is equally
neighbourhood, in terms of class and generational in-
a plea to those in charge and to those who can: please,
tegration, of a balanced mix between commerce, serv-
don’t destroy Campo de Ourique! You wouldn’t have to
ices and housing, between public and private spaces.
do much: just leave it alone. • campo de Ourique & estrela con vida · 9