Life

Saturday 11th January 2025. A Happy New Year to all our readers in 2025! As guardians (or rather graveyard keepers) of the language, neither the German nor the Portuguese publishing houses could bring themselves to give the Italian writer, doctor, painter and politician Carlo Levi, born in Turin in 1902, a permanent place in their literary programmes. The fear of …

Saturday 5th October 2024. Jane Goodall, a British scientist and environmental activist, asked the German doctor and scientific journalist Eckart von Hirschhausen: “If we as humans claim to be the smartest species on the planet, why are we destroying our own home?” This question can be found in the new bestseller ‘Unlearn CO2 – Time for a climate without crisis’, …

Saturday 20th July 2024. Do you have to love nature to be able to protect it? Or is it enough simply to calculate the value of a forest in economic terms? The attitude that people have towards the forest, towards invasive tree species and the risk of forest fires arising from the large-scale cultivation of eucalyptus, explains the ethical rationale …

Saturday, 15th june 2024. Portugal has 308 municipalities. One of them is the medium-sized city of Torres Vedras, located 54 kilometres to the north-west of Lisbon and covering an area of 407 km². This inland municipality has 83,072 inhabitants (Census 2021) and spreads over 13 parishes. The municipal council is led by the Socialist Party and its mayor is Laura …

Saturday 4th May 2024. The way he writes is not as dry as I initially thought. Rather, it is characterised by a highly active scientific competence, coupled with a writer’s finely tuned sense of humour in its practical application. The author does not remain locked away in an ivory tower of theory. As well as providing us with reliable findings, …

Saturday 23rd March 2024. Market gardening – the worldwide trend of small-scale farming based on the use of organic and regenerative farming techniques has arrived in the Algarve. More and more farms are offering their produce at farmers’ markets from Lagos to Tavira; some even deliver a weekly vegetable box to your doorstep. If you haven’t come across the term …

Saturday 3rd February 2024. The small publishing house “Haupt”, based in Bern, Switzerland, has published an interesting and important book. Telling the story of the spice trade over 5,000 years, it was written by Norwegian journalist Thomas Reinertsen Berg and translated from Norwegian into German. Why isn’t this book also available in Portuguese and English translations? And why does a …

Saturday 27th January 2024. Now, here for once we have not just talk – things are actually delivered. Last Monday, the new museum of Vila do Bispo was inaugurated by Mayor Rute Silva in the presence of the president of the Algarvian CCDR (Coordination and Development Commission) José Apolinário. The new Museum Vila do Bispo is called O Celeiro da …

Saturday, the 18th of November 2023. Fancy an ocean with a mountain view in the south of Portugal in early December, in the Monchique mountains, with the Atlantic stretching out at your feet? Starting Friday 1 December (public holiday) and Saturday 2 December through Sunday 3 December, the Monchique mountains are hosting their annual hiking festival. The town hall of …

Saturday 11th November 2023. Nearly everything has been said about the possible mining of lithium in northern Portugal. As far back as in autumn 2019, four years ago now, ECO123 was already taking an in-depth look at this issue. This is something you might want to read up on again? Clicking on https://eco123.info/portugal/entrevistas/o-legado-que-vou-deixar-aos-meus-filhos-e-o-que-a-mina-la-deixar/ will take you to our extensive ECO …