Portugal

ECO123: What is Proforbiomed? Architect Inês Duarte (CICAE): Proforbiomed was a project financed by the MED programme lasting from 2010 to 2014, so it was concluded at the end of last year and the aim of this project was to promote the use of residual forest biomass in the Mediterranean area; it covered the whole of the Mediterranean basin, which has a very similar forestry context, and where everyone faces a serious problem of forest fires, even more now owing to global warming, which has been getting worse. This project aimed to promote the use of this biomass so as …

Loulé. There are six of us inflicting this on ourselves and squeezing into the lift cage. A bell rings and slowly, at one metre per second, we float down into the depths of the earth. We’re all wearing blue plastic helmets. They’re equipped with torches that are fastened to a cable with the belt around your waist. During the journey underground, I think about what could have motivated people more than 50 years ago, to drill a 260-metre-deep hole in the earth? Because what we are doing is nothing other than following a widened, enlarged borehole into the deep. There’s …

Fernando Pessoa wrote about it, the Salt Museum revitalises it Until just a few years ago, Portugal was one of the countries with the largest artisan salt production sectors and inclusively ensuring the history of the Atlantic coastline of the Iberian Peninsula featured in the most famous dish of the Roman Empire, Iberian Garum, made from the marine salt extracted at salt works along the extent of what would become the Portuguese coastline. As from the mid-1970s, there began a decline in Portuguese salt production that would go into freefall as from the 1990s and certainly interlinked with the country’s …

The colour of orange is not the same as the colour of tangerine given that the latter is a Guimarães exclusive and more specifically in Portuguese, Cor de Tangerina, the name of the vegetarian restaurant located right in front of the castle that was the birthplace of the County of Portugal. Conceived of in Santo Tirso but put into practice in Guimarães, this is the only vegetarian restaurant in all of the city but one that still manages to pack the gastronomic history of the surrounding region into details such as usage of typical aromatic herbs such as rosemary or …

Education is the accompanied acquisition of physical, emotional, personal, social, intellectual and practical skills by children that are prerequisites for all members of a culture. In ancient Greece, education meant both intellectual and ethical training and guiding people towards contemplating life’s big questions. What mattered here was the attainment of excellence and the outstanding quality of their social and civic skills. Therefore education involves the act of one person, who knows the way, taking another by the hand, showing them that way and actively accompanying them. Every kind of education functions according to this model, environmental education too. With us …

 A short travel diary in three acts, many trains and with hundreds of strawberry tree fruits My journey is to take me from the island of Vilm on the German Baltic coast through the whole of Western Europe to the most southerly part of Portugal, in 48 hours. How can that work out well? My ferry ticket and my seven railway tickets speak a simple language; they say: you will board the ferry on misty Vilm, and then change four times, sleep for quite a long time, then change twice, sleep again, change, and … get off in the sunny …

There are several years’ work in this film. She seems to be exhausted. And so we have to wait for a few weeks for the interview. Our very personal interview is preceded by several lively exchanges of ideas by mobile phone. Why do you want to film me, BJ Boulter asks in one of her messages? She is not persuaded by the answer, that certain witnesses of contemporary history have earned their place in our ancestral gallery, but she agrees nonetheless. Finally, we meet La Grande Dame do Filme at her Quinta de Ochalá in Estombar near Lagoa. A table …

Portugal is increasingly becoming a first-choice destination not only for the rest of Europe but also for the Portuguese themselves. And while this is good news from the economic perspective, in environment terms, there is the impact stemming from the footprints left both by travelling and by accommodation. Such simple details such as the consumption of water, foodstuffs, recycling or construction materials may end up making a fulcral difference. Thus, ECO123 presents here three hotel complexes who are as concerned about the wellbeing of their guests as they are about the planet itself without, however, giving up on any of …

Pathways to restoring a non-tourism dependent Algarve. The small village of Ameixial1, located in the council of Loulé, hosted the presentation ceremony for the final projects resulting from last autumn’s Permaculture Design Course. This presentation counted on the participation of its fifteen students and the attendance of many of the local citizens who, with a certain degree of reluctance but a lot of curiosity, began getting into, observing and questioning the students about the proposals and solutions that they had “designed”. These appeared on posters dotted around the venue and serving to facilitate the explanation and understanding of terms as …

ECO123 spoke to Rodrigo Rocha, the coordinator of WWOOF Portugal, who lives in Estremoz and Sagres. Rocha is 39 years old. Originally from Santos in Brazil, he came to Portugal when he was 17, studied geology in Coimbra, and completed his doctorate at the University of Évora. He is the father of twins, and he loves the sea. ECO123: How did you become a founder member of WWOOF in Portugal, and how did WWOOF start in Portugal? Rodrigo Rocha: The first time I heard anything about WWOOF was when a friend of mine was living and working on a farm …