Interviews

Monchique’s water has been known since the time when the Romans occupied the Iberian Peninsula. Endowed with unique properties, this water, with its ‘strange flavour’ (as various consumers have mentioned ever since it first began to be produced commercially), has recently become a synonym for quality and well-being. After passing through a period of financial difficulty, the Sociedade da Água …

Teresa Fernandes, head of Communication and Environmental Education at Águas do Algarve, the company that is responsible for the region’s water supply, admits that there is a possibility of a water shortage in the medium to long term. However, even if it doesn’t rain, she guarantees that there will be no lack of water for the local population, at least …

In Portugal, José Pacheco, aged 63, is a symbol of alternative school education. This short grey-haired man with bright eyes and a moustache looks like the quintessential friendly teacher. But his words are radical: “Today the people of the 21st century are being taught by teachers from the 20th century using methods from the 19th century.” In his view, classes …

Recently, a crowd funding campaign attracted my journalistic attention. In it, a school wanted to implement an education project through crowd funding. So, I took €50 from the business till and invested it in the building of a new, year 9 classroom at the Waldorf school in São João dos Montes near Vila Franca da Xira. The project was going …

José Júlio Brito’s story began in 2010, on the day when he left his home, in Vila Real de Santo António, with his rucksack on his back, and set off looking for the answers to his inner search. His original intention was to walk without any particular destination and to face up to the limitations that he had placed upon …

And then one morning, the time had come, Jürgen Kahlisch recalls. On a cool April morning, he left his friends’ flat in Berlin and closed the door behind him. The hiker took a deep breath and shook the night-time frost out of his bones. Now lying ahead of him were six months and 4,000 kilometres from northeast to southwest. Travelling …

At a time when directives are increasingly calling for the use of environmentally-friendly energies, how many electric vehicles does Eva have? Just one. Our investments in the fleet haven’t – yet – been made in electric vehicles or ones fuelled by natural gas, for two reasons: the possibility of investing in environmental measures announced by the government was limited to …

You covered some 3,500 kilometres between Lisbon and Athens. How did you travel? We left Lisbon with a rucksack on our backs. We walked and hitch-hiked. What route did you follow? We caught a ferry from Lisbon to Almada. From there, we started walking in the direction of Évora, and we also hitched lifts. After this came Madrid, and then …

There are ever more movements appearing linked to sustainable mobility and the pleasure of being amid Nature.
Do politicians also take walks in the forest? I enjoy walking, yes, and I go hiking, above all, in the Serra do Caldeirão, beginning in the area around Alcoutim and passing through Corte Velha, on the Via Algarviana… How many kilometres would you say …

Could you introduce yourself briefly to our readers? Henning Vogt: I work as an educator in child and youth psychiatry in Lübeck. I learned two professions, firstly as a joiner and then as an educator. While I was doing my second training course, I knew that I would go travelling as a journeyman joiner. I set off on 2nd January, …