“What I cannot, because I do not have that right, is to remain silent, under any pretext.”
Francisco Sá Carneiro
Every year, depending on the season, Portugal is inundated with warnings, sometimes of storms, sometimes of fires, without, at the end of these decades, being able to even avoid the consequences of such phenomena, let alone act in a preventive way.
Storm Kristin, while not failing to highlight the curiosity of the fact that it has become a habit to attribute mostly female names to the most extreme meteorological events, and especially to their victims, direct or indirect, had the power to demonstrate that little or nothing could be learned from past episodes, such as the blackout in the year 2025.
In addition to the evident lack of verification of systems that must be able to function, even in extreme conditions, of which drainage is just one example, there is the failure of the electricity distribution and water distribution systems, which have not yet been fully restored after all these days. What this means, in unequivocal and clear terms, is that there were – and at the time of writing these lines there still are – populations that found themselves without help and completely unable to request it, which explains the deaths of those who, feeling abandoned, decided to take initiatives that ended up victimizing them.
Having arrived here, year after year and faced with the repeated ineffectiveness of the civil protection system and the slowness and insensitivity of the real political leaders, it is mandatory to renew the question about the very expensive SIRESP. The truth is that the alleged communication system of the security and civil protection forces, supposedly proof against all kinds of calamities, in reality, after repeated death threats in public pillory, always ends up leaving the attention of public opinion and, as such, continues to remain.
On the other hand, if our Prime Minister was very late and preferred to prioritize going to see private planes before visiting the most affected populations, such as those in Figueira da Foz, it was certain and known that he would seek to take political advantage of the misfortune. If, on the one hand, we have a now happily deleted video of Minister Leitão Amaro that looked more like a terrible action film, on the other, André Ventura could not be missing who, this time not pretending to be putting out fires as he did in the summer, quickly sought to capitalize on other people’s misfortune for his own benefit.
However, what causes me the greatest perplexity are not those who appear but those who disappear, as is the case of the Minister of Internal Affairs, who to date has not only explained nothing, but has not assumed any responsibility, obviously political, for the renewed failure of our systems. Therefore, with due respect, I cannot agree with the typically Portuguese logic of making fun of everything that happens badly and quickly moving on to the next joke.
The deaths and financial misfortune of citizens deserve to be more than a joke or seen as a sad fate. It deserves, above all, to do what has never been done until now: resolve the communications problem definitively, appoint to positions people who, instead of their main attribute being a political card, have real and proven skills and put an end to businesses that, although very profitable for some of those who intervened in them, are ruinous for the Portuguese people, if not deadly. And this cannot be, purely and simply, initially silent and in a second carried out, under penalty of next summer we will be counting deaths from fires and in roughly a year’s time the news will be about floods and their devastating effects.
Portugal is the country of fado but you don’t always have to see the same story sung. It is possible to change course, especially when people come together and this is the challenge I leave, faced with a trail of destruction and deaths that could not have been completely avoided, but whose scope could, indeed, have been much smaller.
Two last notes: on the one hand, the measures, although late, announced by the Government are correct and only have a defect. On the other hand, the solidarity of citizens has been unquestionably admirable. When everything fails, humanity remains and it truly performs miracles.
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