MetaFilter posts tagged with Portugal

Time flies by when you're the driver of a train

jontyjago — Sat, 25 May 2013 17:39:46 -0800

You may remember the 7.5 hour documentary released in 2009 which allowed you to travel the journey between Bergen to Oslo from the comfort of your home. If your wanderlust was fired up watching that video, then you may enjoy some of the other trips you can take. Switzerland:

Zermatt to Gornergrat in Summer (50m)
Zermatt to Gornergrat in Winter Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (30m)
Le Train de Vignes (11m)

France:

Brussels to Paris (1h24m)
Villefranche - Latour-de-Carol (narrow gauge) (2h20m)

UK:

Glasgow - Fort William (4h30m)
King's Cross to Royston (39m)

Italy:

San Remo - Genoa (2h8m)
San Remo - Cuneo (2h)

Austria:

Salzburg - Villach (2h6m)

Myanmar:

Thazi - Kalaw (4h50m)

Japan:

Yosan Line (1h16m)

USA:

Canton Junction - Providence (9m)
Shaw Air Force Base Railroad (32m)
Chicago to Saint Louis Part 1 Part 2 (40m)

Australia:

Karratha - Tom Price (5h)

New Zealand:

Christchurch - Springfield (3h20m)

Greece:

Thessaloniki to Serres (2h)

Russia:

Lake Baikal (20m)

Romania:

Timisoara Nord - Resita Nord (1h22m)

The Netherlands:

Amsterdam Centraal - Brussel Zuid (1h49m)

Portugal:

Guarda to Nelas (1h8m)

Norway: And last but not least you can enjoy the entire 9h50m trip from Trondheim to Bodo

Happy Travels!

"to restructure your debt is to declare yourself similar to …"

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:12:48 -0800

Lee Buchheit, fairy godmother to finance ministers in distress

Lee Buchheit, a lawyer at US firm Cleary Gottlieb, has been present at all the major debt crises of the past three decades. His reputation among investors is as a fearsome and aggressive litigator, but finance ministers in distress see him as something of a fairy godmother.

He insists he does not make a moral judgement in choosing who he acts for, but rather enjoys working for the debtor nations. "It's just more fun," he says. "If you represent the lender, your client is tiresomely saying things to you like, 'Why don't they just pay us the money back?' When you're on the debtor side, you can say, 'If you want to get it back, why did you give it to us?'"

Que estando triste, cantava

winna — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:56:20 -0800

Fado is a Portuguese musical genre which originated in the 1820’s in Lisbon. It has been enjoying a revival over the last twenty years, one of the most prominent recent voices being that of Mariza. In 2006 Simon Broughton did a documentary exploring the roots of the music. Via youtube, here is Mariza and the Story of Fado. The current historiography suggests that it was part of the cultural exchange between Brazil and Portugal which occurred when the Portuguese court fled Napoleon to Brazil in 1807. Fado was extremely popular in Portugal through the early twentieth century, but its popularity declined after the fall of the corporatist military regime in 1974 due to the way the regime had used the music to push their social agenda. Its revival is associated with a number of singers, among them Mísia, Cristina Branco, and of course Mariza herself. Men sing fado as well (of the two schools of fado, Lisbon and Coimbra, that of Coimbra is traditionally sung by men) - some of the men currently singing fado (both of Lisbon and Coimbra) are António Zambujo, Camané, Fernando Machado Soares (who is one of the great exponents of the Coimbra tradition) and Marco Rodrigues.

This Is Working

vidur — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:55:37 -0800

"Twelve years ago, Portugal eliminated criminal penalties for drug users. Since then, those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin go unindicted and possession is a misdemeanor on par with illegal parking. Experts are pleased with the results." "One gram of heroin, two grams of cocaine, 25 grams of marijuana leaves or five grams of hashish: These are the drug quantities one can legally purchase and possess in Portugal, carrying them through the streets of Lisbon in a pants pocket, say, without fear of repercussion. MDMA -- the active ingredient in ecstasy -- and amphetamines -- including speed and meth -- can also be possessed in amounts up to one gram. That's roughly enough of each of these drugs to last 10 days."

Prison of Debt Paralyzes West

Vibrissae — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 21:01:14 -0800

Be it the United States or the European Union, most Western countries are so highly indebted today that the markets have a greater say in their policies than the people. Why are democratic countries so pathetic when it comes to managing their money sustainably? This clear, well-written essay in Der Speigel lays out the current debt crisis - along with current, proposed solutions - in an understandable manner. Not included among the so-far-proposed solutions is one other that has opened up a veritable financial market and debt Pandora's Box - i.e. a central bank debt jubilee.

The Parasols of Portugal

IvoShandor — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:41:40 -0800

The Umbrellas of Águenda

È morto a Lisbona Antonio Tabucchi

chavenet — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:13:18 -0800

Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi has died in Lisbon. From Wikipedia: "Deeply in love with Portugal, he was an expert, critic and translator of the works of the writer Fernando Pessoa from whom he drew the conceptions of saudade, of fiction and of the heteronyms. Tabucchi was first introduced to Pessoa's works in the 1960s when attending the Sorbonne. He was so charmed that, back in Italy, he attended a course of Portuguese language for a better comprehension of the poet." He was the author of Afirma Pereira ("Pereira Declares") in Portuguese, later made into a film in Italian, Sostiene Pereira. He also wrote Requiem: A Hallucination, also made into a film. An obituary in his mother tongue. An obituary in his adopted tongue.

78 78s

carter — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:00:29 -0800

78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it." Ian's projects have been discussed here before.

Surf's Way Up

chavenet — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:21:21 -0800

Garrett McNamara surfs a 90-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal -- a world record.

Toma!

chavenet — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:58:03 -0800

In 1875, the Portuguese cartoonist and caricaturist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro invented an “everyman” to express the opinion of “Zé Povinho” – “ José of the People”, or “John Doe". His most famous “opinion” is the “manguito”, a universally-recognizable symbolic affront to the status quo, with the slogan “Toma!”, or “take that!” In the wake of the downgrade of Portugal’s sovereign debt to “junk” by Moody’s, the Portuguese were outraged. They reportedly jammed up the Moody's site. Zé Povinho responded with his usual aplomb. The figurines are made by hand and the anti-Moodys one went on sale this week. [Last link in Portuguese; some NSFW language and rude gestures in some of the links]

To The Finland Station

chavenet — Tue, 10 May 2011 10:51:21 -0800

Portugal, in the throes of an IMF / EU bailout that Finland could block, sends a video letter to convince Finland to support the rescue effort. Finland responds. Bonus: crisis the focus of Portugal's Eurovision entry this year.

What a fool I am

zabuni — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:50:08 -0800

Protests spread to Portugal. As of posting, two hundred to three hundred thousand people are currently protesting the current government in Lisbon. The majority of the complaints come from the "desperate generation", 20 to 30 year olds who, although educated, cannot find a job, while facing increasing austerity measures, amidst rumors of an Ireland style bailout. The spark that set off the protests was a youtube video of a song by the popular band Deolinda (Portugese) (myspace). The song, Que Parva Que Eu Sou (Oh what a fool I am) (translation), brings voice to the unemployment and underemployment that fuels the current protests. via Reddit, which has some interesting discussions from locals on both sides of the issue.

A Model for the Rest of Us

gman — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:50:17 -0800

The AP reports that the drug policy in Portugal is paying off.

The Digital Version Of The Nativity Story

ericb — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:51:45 -0800

The Digital Version Of The Nativity Story, told through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, GMail, Foursquare, Amazon and more. ...created by ExcentricPT (Lisbon, Portugal). Portugese version of the video: História Do Natal Digital. Press Coverage:"História do Natal Digital" - Reportagem RTP* * -- paging MiguelCardoso for a translation. Cocktails will be provided.

Dig Senalonga

kenko — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 14:14:37 -0800

Twenty-four vintage book covers from Portugal

O Ano da Morte do José Saramago

chavenet — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:35:34 -0800

Portuguese writer and 1998's Nobel Prize for Literature recipient José Saramago has died, age 87. [News link in Portuguese] He died in Lanzarote, Spain, where he had lived since a bust-up in the early 1990s with Portugal's government over his controversial book, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Saramago wrote nearly 30 books, and was cited for the Nobel as a writer "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." No holiday for death, after all.

Drug war

caddis — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:35:21 -0800

The Portugal experiment. On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.... The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world. (pdf of complete paper) Winds of change are blowing and a primary driver appears to be that very American value - money.

Lucy Pepper

ocherdraco — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:01:16 -0800

Lucy Pepper is an English artist living in Portugal. Her illustrations, animations, and cheeky blog, illuminate the cult of the bata, Portuguese beach culture, just how weird British tourists can look, and what it's like to have one's daughters humiliated by your very presence in public. Some of my favorites: "Incoming!" "You Need Glasses" "51"

The unrivaled queen of the Portuguese fado, Amália Rodrigues

Joe Beese — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:52:34 -0800

"Upon receiving news of her passing, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres ordered three days of national mourning, declaring her "the Voice of Portugal." Don't take my word for it. Listen to that voice.

"There are no more Jews in Portugal"

orthogonality — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:24:09 -0800

What is a Spaniard?: Forcibly Crossing the Cross, the Crescent, and the Star

"The conversions came at the end of one of the most successful Jewish periods in human history... Their success led them to call their land Sepharad, a name from the book of Obadiah that implied that Spanish Jews were the successors to the Jews of Israel. This world ended in 1391."

"At the appointed time, those children who were not presented voluntarily were seized by the officials and forced to the font.... In many cases, parents smothered their offspring in their farewell embrace. In others, they threw them into wells in order to save them from the disgrace of apostasy, and then killed themselves. Sometimes, even old men were dragged to the churches and forcibly baptized by over-zealous fanatics,... In all other cases, the unwilling neophytes, some mere babies, were distributed throughout the country, as far as possible from home, to be brought up in Christian surroundings."

The first link, above, details a recent genetic study, the second begins in 1391 in Spain, the third jumps forward to 1407 in Portugal. The remaining links, below, attempt to provide context. It's difficult to try to adequately cover over two centuries of the history of the forced conversions and "ethnic cleansing", in two (or more) nation states, of two different minority religions. I've omitted much: the earlier Muslim history of Iberia; motivations for the conversions and expulsions; King Ferdinand's purported Jewish ancestry; the forcible conversions of Jews and native populations in the New World; the Spanish Inquisition as a tool to enforce "sincere" conversions; the use of forced adoption to literally steal a group's future, similarly used in Argentina's Dirty War and in Franco's Spain; later Spanish relations with North African Moors; and, except in the first link, 500 years of the aftermath of the ethnic and religious cleansing in the 14th and 15th centuries. My original intent was just to link the first article, on the genetics of Spain. In an effort to avoid editorializing, I've use block quotes to link to (long) texts giving the basic background of the forced conversions, and later, expulsions, of Jews and Muslims from Spain. The links below follow more or less chronologically, first the forced conversions, then the expulsions, of the Jews and then then Moors. The "New Christians":

"New Christians" is a term applied specifically to three groups of Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants in the Iberian Peninsula. The first group converted in the wake of the massacres in Spain in 1391 and the proselytizing fervor of the subsequent decades. The second, also in Spain, were baptized following the decree of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 expelling all Jews who refused to accept Christianity. The third group, in Portugal, was converted by force and royal fiat in 1497. Like the word Conversos, but unlike Marranos, the term New Christian carried no intrinsic pejorative connotation, but with the increasing power of the Inquisition and the growth of the concept of "limpieza de sangre," cleansing the blood, the name signaled the disabilities inevitably heaped on those who bore it.

Vicente Ferrer:

... the Dominican friar Vicente Ferrer... traveled from one end of Castile to the other, and everywhere zealously urged the Jews to embrace Christianity, appearing with a cross in one hand and the Torah in the other. His impassioned sermons won him great influence, and he accomplished his ends in Murcia, Lorca, Ocaña, Illescas, Valladolid, Tordesillas, Salamanca, and Zamora. He spent the month of July, 1411, in Toledo; he invaded the large synagogue, which he transformed into the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca, and he is said to have baptized more than 4,000 Jews in that city.... At Ferrer's request a law consisting of twenty-four clauses, which had been drawn up by Paul de Burgos*, was issued (Jan., 1412) in the name of the child-king John II. The only object of this law was to reduce the Jews to poverty and to further humiliate them. They were ordered to live by themselves, in enclosed Juderias, and they were to repair, within eight days after the publication of the order, to the quarters assigned them under penalty of loss of property. They were prohibited from practising medicine, surgery, or chemistry, and from dealing in bread, wine, flour, meat, etc. They might not engage in handicrafts or trades of any kind, nor might they fill public offices, or act as money-brokers or agents.... These laws, which were rigidly enforced, any violation of them being punished with a fine of from 300 to 2,000 maravedis and flagellation, were calculated to compel the Jews to embrace Christianity.... ...Ferrer's fanatic zeal succeeded also in Aragon in leading many Jews to pretendedconversion, especially in Saragossa, Daroco, and Calatayud. Besides the places mentioned, he made proselytes in Albacete, Astorga, Avila, Benevent, Burgos, Leon, Mayorga, Majorca, Palencia, Paredes, Toro, Segovia, etc. The total number of Jews converted by him in Spain was, according to Mariana, 35,000; according to Zacuto ("Yuḥasin," p. 225), more than 200,000.... ...One of Vicente Ferrer's most zealous assistants in the work of conversion was Joshua ibn Vives Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fé, who aimed at nothing less than baptisms en masse....

*Paul of Burgos, mentioned above, first from the Catholic Encyclopedia: ...He was the most wealthy and influential Jew of Burgos, a scholar of the first rank in Talmudic and rabbinical literature, and a Rabbi of the Jewish community. The irresistible logic of the Summa of St. Thomas led him to the Faith of Christ.... Then a different view, from the Jewish Encyclopedia: "...Paul, who even after he had been baptized continued to correspond with several Jews, including Joseph Orabuena, chief rabbi of Navarre, and Joshua ibn Vives, became a bitter enemy of Judaism, and tried his best, frequently with success, to convert his former coreligionists...." The Expulsion of the Spanish Jews: "The King gave them three months' time in which to leave...."

The Jews' expulsion had been the pet project of the Spanish Inquisition, headed by Father Tomas de Torquemada. Torquemada believed that as long as the Jews remained in Spain, they would influence the tens of thousands of recent Jewish converts to Christianity to continue practicing Judaism.... With their most important project, the country's unification, accomplished, the king and queen concluded that the Jews were expendable. On March 30, they issued the expulsion decree, the order to take effect in precisely four months... Throughout those frantic months, Dominican priests actively encouraged Jews to convert to Christianity and thereby gain salvation both in this world and the next.

The conversion and expulsion of the Spanish Muslims:

...Shortly after the start of the sixteenth century, however, the fortunes of Peninsular Muslims in general began to change. Pressured by the Toledan Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros to take measures to bring the Muslims of Granada into the Christian faith, and aware that alleged Christian abuses had provoked an uprising in the Alpujarras, King Fernando and Queen Isabel issued an order in 1502 requiring all Muslims in Castile and Leon to convert to Christianity or leave at once. The same law would reach Navarre in 1515 and Aragon in 1525. The royal order was widely enforced (executed in large part by mass baptisms and coercive tactics), and by the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the official Muslim population of Spain had been reduced from nearly half a million to nearly zero....

"Yesterday they were kings in their own homes":

It is ironic that those same Old Testament passages which have been used to support the theory that Palestine is the Jewish promised land were not only cited by apologists for a policy of mass expulsion for the Moriscos but were cited by anti-Jewish theologians in advocating the need for statutes of purity of blood.

Magician.

gman — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:55:36 -0800

Merlin is a Portuguese Lusitanos bullfighting horse who was bred by Jacques Bonnier. I in no way endorse bullfighting. I endorse the fancy hoofwork.

Manoel de Oliveira turns 100

neblina_matinal — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:28:27 -0800

Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira turned 100 yesterday. Oliveira was born 13 years after the Lumiére brothers shot the first movie ever, and he is still going strong, currently directing "Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira" ("Idiosyncrasies of a Blonde Girl") and making plans for a project after that. Even if this is the first time you've heard of Manoel de Oliveira, or indeed if you are not a fan of his long, slow style, you have to be amazed at the remarkable condition in which he hits the 3 figures (scroll to 3:23 to see him).

Kuduro

billtron — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:54:24 -0800

There was a time when it seemed that groups like Frederic Galliano presents Kuduro Sound System and Buraka Som Sistema would do for kuduro what groups like Diplo and Bonde do Role did for Funk Carioca: make it popular with hipsters in the United States. But it hasn't happened yet. Why?

Quinta de Regaleira

vacapinta — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 21:05:25 -0800

The Quinta de Regaleira, completed in 1910, was the dream palace of the Portuguese millionaire Antonio Agusto de Carvalho Monteiro who was a devotee of mysticism and lost arts. The enormous gardens include a Templar initiation well,underground labyrinths, hidden doorways, fantastic grottos, lookout towers, and of course the palace itself (hunting room, outside detail, gargoyles) More photos here and here.

Oh Good, It Looks Like Brazil Is Going To Win The World Cup Again!

MiguelCardoso — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:02:20 -0800

Sorry, But Only One Of These Countries Can Win The World Cup. But which one will it be? And what are the odds? The Guardian's Fiver can be as funny about it as it likes, but this is no laughing matter, not anymore, as we will soon be surrounded by 31 unmistakable, irredeemable, inconsolable losers. Anyway, whatever happens, I'm sure everyone here at MetaFilter will join me in wishing it's one of the countries that speak Portuguese.