“Yes, we want to solve the housing problem. But we don’t just want to solve the housing problem. We want to build a city. We want neighborhoods, squares, streets where it is pleasant to live. Yes, we want houses for the people. But think more, think bigger, think better: we want palaces for the people,” he challenged, in reference to the São Bento da Vitoria Monastery in Porto, where the party’s 16th congress took place.
At a congress where some candidates for the country’s main municipalities were presented, Rui Tavares urged the party’s choices for local authorities to “never give up on an idea because it seems too ambitious.”
“Talk about it with your fellow citizens, make them dream of the garden, the library, the school, the new street, the new connection, the new city they can have. We don’t want showcase cities just for foreigners,” he declared.
In the closing speech, better conditions in public schools and more green spaces in the city were highlighted by the Livre leader, who criticized some local candidates.
“We want clean streets, but we want art on the streets. We certainly don’t want to eradicate neighborhoods and eradicate people. It repulses us that this could be the language used by many political candidates, even from parties that are founders of politics in Portugal, of democracy in Portugal. Parties that clearly have in their statutes the defense of human dignity, but remain silent when their candidate defends the eradication of neighborhoods,” he remarked, referring to the PSD’s candidacy for the Amadora City Council, led by Suzana Garcia.
In the North, Rui Tavares expressed the desire for culturally enriched neighborhoods and criticized the fact that in Porto, there are neighborhoods “next to Serralves, yet cut off from Serralves,” referring to the neighborhoods of Pinheiro Torres and Pasteleira in the city’s western area.
“We will be happy when a kid from Pasteleira becomes a curator at Serralves or director of MoMA in New York because we are not satisfied with little,” he stated.
