The catastrophe that recently struck the country brought back to the public debate a reality that is so often forgotten: socio-territorial asymmetries persist and the interior continues to live between resilience and invisibility.
There is a recurring error in the way we look at the interior: we either portray it as a space of lack and delay, or we romanticize it as a moral and scenic reserve. Neither. It is a territory of work, innovation, critical thinking and community building. It is a space where concrete answers to complex problems are experienced.
In Vale de Lafões we find two examples that dismantle the simplistic narrative of the passive periphery. InSitu, an innovative and pioneering festival dedicated to the image of nature, mobilizes schools, professionals and amateurs, inviting the community to look at the territory with attention and responsibility. It is public policy for the Municipality of Vouzela, culture and pedagogy in defense of nature and the environment.
A few kilometers away, based in Oliveira de Frades, Assol, a social solidarity institution, refuses to settle. It works with people with disabilities and supports their families based on an essential question: does this serve people? Does not follow fads, does not replicate models without reflection. Question, evaluate, reformulate. Invest in regular integration into the job market. It assumes that autonomy is built in interdependence, in a network, in a community.
This practice is well expressed in the book Keep Walking to Advanceby Mário Pereira, one of the founders of Assol. It covers more than a thousand people and has around 500 partnerships.
These are examples that the interior is not synonymous with immobility. On the contrary, it is often outside the large centers that innovative practices are tried out, closer to people and less hostage to media agendas.
The problem is structural. As long as public policies remain excessively centralized, designed from offices far from concrete reality, asymmetries will remain. Combating territorial inequalities does not mean distributing funds individually, nor announcing measures after each crisis. It means integrating the territory into the decision, listening to those who live and work there, planning and evaluating impacts.
Development is not limited to economic indicators, it is access to services, mobility, culture, inclusion, participation and dignity. It’s about ensuring that a child in a village has the same opportunities as a child in a capital district. It is to ensure that a person with a disability finds answers that promote real autonomy and not just formal protection.
The inside does not want to be an object of compassion. He wants to be the subject of the decision. It’s time to adjust the lens: less circumstantial speeches and more structural commitment. Because the country will only be truly cohesive when it stops treating the interior as a margin and starts to recognize it as a strategic center for collective construction.
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