A Poetic Stroll Through Lisbon's Almirante Reis: Reflections on Identity and Change in the City's Heart

A Walk Down Almirante Reis

Portuguese people hide inside their homes with the blinds down, Zé tells me with the clarity of Lisbon's prophets as we exit the Pentagon. Perhaps it's a remnant of the Salazar era, I think while walking the path from the lizard's back to the Penha snail and up to the parenthesis of Almirante Reis, right there at the Alameda, the border between the north and south of the avenue, between the Fonte Luminosa and the Technical Institute, between those architectural mastodons erected by the increasingly appreciated doctor professor for forgotten generations of sardine sauce on empty bread. And as I look at the sad balconies around me, Zé's phrase unravels with more vehemence inside me, as if shaking the ground and returning us to the candid times of 1755.

I decide to leave, but July remains broken in half, and our city stays suspended in the angelic version of its own desire, with the help of the German director's wings soaring over Lisbon, as if the capital needed its Angels and wasn't preparing a solitary flight always seen in these stifling months. The city stifling itself and time smiling at the little ones like A., lulled by the wobbly wheels of his stroller; I adjust his hat to the sun, and we pierce the artery always in fury. We ride it like in an old Rex cinema film. What character could I be in this Lisbon with a naked audience, forgotten of its main characters and with foreign subtitles? The capital screen fades like a memory in fade out until the final credits of September.

Almirante Reis plays its role, a spine stuck in the throat of the city bent before the foreign director.

Almirante Reis plays its role, a spine stuck in the throat of the city bent before the foreign director. The corridor where Lisbon is crossed by people who cook with open windows, who phone far away with the smartphone pressed to their heart, who live without blinds, without darkness, without fear of losing even inside rooms refrigerated by pornographic rents.

In the terraces of small glasses and minimalist dishes, the measured and healthy faces smile airbnb-ly, in sips of artisanal cocktails and snacks invaded by kilos of Serra cheese, as they play at saying "Obrigado". I even know that place. In shorts and flip-flops trying to scratch out "Teşekkürler", "Tak" or "Mas" and the locals very typical, while trying to survive the city itself, these well-educated guests, mere extras in the ceremony smiling and waving, while trying to explain the Google Maps trick.

I've always been mistaken for a foreigner in the city where I was born, this one that Saint-Exupéry called the "clear and sad paradise". I start to believe they don't even want me here, and little A. indicates with his leg the path to an accelerationist movement. Onward. I look at the fat moon and its naked stars, a nocturnal harem, lower my guard and stumble upon a friend who's a second-hand bookseller in the garden; he brings a shirt smelling of Constantin nostalgia, oh the good old times, he suggests the lines of António Ferro, the Mocidade school manuals are sold out, it was another quality, man. In the kiosk's terrace, an immigrant reads, absorbed, a yellow book with a Portuguese flag. Title: The Portuguese. I see myself in that cover, just like in Plantation Memories by Grada Kilomba. What will I be? And you? What will we be in this incessant perpendicular movement sobbing through impulses of mandatory growth? The city lost in its conquerable curiosities will never let itself be known.

(The trash bin disappeared. The neighbor from the top floor, the unofficial doorkeeper, has a certainty: It was the barbarians from the building next door. I ask how she knows. She sighs with the air of someone who doesn't need to explain that sprouts are green: They say it was to hide drugs, they keep the container inside the house. That place is a pigsty.

Suspended, I fly to another time. Lisbon, another century, the thirties. One in the carnation, another in the dictatorship. In Germany, that same year, they said about the barbarians twin words, They are different, they are many, they occupy, they abuse, they steal. With the same banal tone, I forget the voice I hear, I fixate on the neighbor's face and think that everything human is beautiful.

In the maternity ward, before little A. was born, I heard from doctor M., The barbarians arrive at the airport and immediately want the birth scheduled. It's to enter our system, it's clear.

I tattoo in a whisper the thought, Be careful who you hate. It might turn out to be someone you love.)

Francisco Mouta Rúbio

Winner of two literary awards (Luis Vilaça 2021 and Museu do Aljube Short Story Contest 2022), he has written for Público, Buala, Gerador among others. He graduated with rising disappointment in advertising from ESCS, and then gained breath during a postgraduate degree in writing arts at Nova FCSH. He doesn't like to work or study out of obligation, but when he falls in love, oh my. He works in audiovisual and digital communication, but his focus is evident: words, books, ideas. In 2025, he launched his first novel, Behind the Writing.

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