It was just a few minutes before 10 am when dozens and dozens of people began to arrive. Old and young, women and men, fit people and people in difficulty, all with shovels, brooms and whatever they thought of taking to the meeting point defined by Gonçalo Lopes last Saturday. The Leiria Municipal Stadium seemed to have been swallowed by an evil spirit and the exhausted Mayor heard galoshes and boots making their way through puddles and rubble. First, it seemed like a premonition, then a haunting made up of flesh and blood people, silent but determined people, hundreds walking towards him, ready to help in any way.
There had been too many things… the weight of the tragedy, the breakdown of communication, electricity, water, their city swallowed by the wind and separated from the country, as if all Leirienses were in a limbo that was no longer life, but not yet death. Gonçalo Lopes is not one to cry easily, but when he saw that crowd, armed to the teeth with buckets and mops, he tried not to see him weakened.
Gonçalo is not yet 50 years old, but these days, since the early hours of Wednesday, he has felt time slipping away from him. You feel time running away from you. A feeling of anger and frustration, but also of combat, of action against fear, against giving up and for the city, for the father and mother, respected teachers in Leiria, for the two proud children who know that their father will not be returning home in the next few days. That’s what he thought about when the sound of galoshes became a certainty and a light of hope.
We have to do our part, also for Gonçalo, who did not deserve to have seen a promotional video of a minister wearing a luxury shirt sleeve, managing the crisis as if he were in a gateway by Yves Saint Laurent. An indignity.
Consultant
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