Manifesto wants Boa Hora Court as a Judicial Museum in Lisbon
Who saw her and who saw her. The Good Time. The Court that gained its own name throughout its 166 years of existence in Chiado. Today, those who have sex with closed doors, through which they can, will not find a treasure well kept, as if. The memory is there impregnated in the paint on the chipped walls, in the decaying tiles and in the room of the Plenary Court, the voices of those who were arrested by the dictatorship. But they are forgotten memories.
There are, however, those who want to preserve a History. João Miguel Barros is the lawyer and photographer who, with his lens, captured the degradation of the Court, which closed in 2009, when it was transferred to the Justice Campus, in Parque das Nações.
João Miguel Barros also passed through those corridors in the 1980s, a trainee lawyer, and now he rebels against inaction in the face of the abandonment of a historic: launched, with a series of personalities, the manifesto For a Good Hour at the service of the city, which has already found support from former justice ministers, former prosecutors and other figures in the judiciary. “People with great importance are saying to open space to the city”, says the lawyer.
The Court was the subject of your photography magazine, a Photo from the zine. In black and white, a destruction in each of the frames, denouncing what, in the eyes of Fernando Jorge, “is a crime against a criminal court in the history of democracy and Portuguese judicial history”.
This is a special Court that dates back to the 17th century, when a Convent was founded, the Convento da Boa Hora, where the religious orders lived. It would also serve as a barracks for the First Battalion of the Volunteers of Commerce, headquarters of one of the Companies of the Royal Police Guard, until it became a court in 1843.
Now it’s been more than a decade waiting for a solution. And João Miguel Barros finally decided to act.
The Judiciary Museum
The Manifesto’s proposal is to honor the former court by creating a Museum of the Judiciary in the space where the Plenary Court operates. But wouldn’t it also be installing a center for structural and creative ideas there, with workshops and artistic residencies, and an idea incubation center for micro-enterprises.
The proposal of the Museum of the Judiciary did not come only now. In fact, long has appeared several times in the history of the abandonment of the building: the first time that it was mentioned was in 2012, after the Ministry of Justice had reacquired part of the building that the City Council in 2011 from the extinct Sociedade Frente e Tejo. SA
The Ministry of Justice took 8120 m2 of the Court and CML with the rest, which installed a primary school and a kindergarten named after Maria Barroso.
The MJ space has now only been used for the Civil Identification Department – which continues to function there.
In 2009, António Costa, initially Mayor of Lisbon, defended the transformation of the space into a hotel, but the Ministry of Justice began to dispute the installation of a Center for Studies of Justice and a Museum of the Judiciary. However, in 2018, it was announced that the Court’s facilities would be allocated to the Court of Appeal – but nothing was done either.
Why? “Lack of money, lack of commitment, lack of vision”, points out João Miguel Barros. But the passage of time translates into further degradation. And more degradation means more investment.
In 2018, João Miguel Barros wrote a article in the Observer, in which he even questioned: “What do you need to do to make decisions and act? Let the building burn?
The memory of a court
Wait, is that the manifesto has results – and that a museum is, in fact, created. “Aquepondo has to be handed over to the city and cannot be handed over to the legal area”, says the lawyer, whether to the idea of building or hosting the Court of Appeal.
João Correia, lawyer and former Secretary of State for Justice, defended this even when he was in government, and remains firm in the fight. “Portugal needs a space where justice is dignified”.
May it dignify it not only by telling the story of the processes, but also of its protagonists, without being limited to Lisbon. A national museum. A Boa Hora would be the right place to do it, said João Correia, who mentioned some of the highlights of his career there:
One of the most publicized cases in which they are registered on the grounds of Parque Mayer and Feira Popular and EPUL (Empresa Pública de Urbanização de Lisboa). But the memories aren’t just his, of course. “The best lawyers went through there in large cases, large judicial debates”, he recalls.
By court of justice, cases like Costa Freire, Casa PiaUGT and Dan Cunha. But also characters like Captain Roby, known for cheating like his lovers, or Dona Branca, the “people’s banker”. On the fair days of the trials, the most popular trial seemed like “the fairs on Sundays”, says Fernando Jorge.
In the courtroom, the Plenary trials of political prisoners of the Estado Novo took place, including Mário Soares dos Carvalhos, a defendant in the trial of Mariavaro Lobo, who also followed the Manifesto and sees himself in the idea of making a museum.
The living memories of the Tribunal da Boa Hora
In 1971, Maria João Lobo was a second-year student at the Lisbon Faculty of Law. One day, the PIDE entered the house, searching documents, books, photographs and arrested her. What if sound from memory is resumed in fragments: “isolation cells”, “rare of close relatives, held in parlors”, “long interrogations”, “isolation torture”, “constant threats”.
He was tried at the Court of Boa Hora and sentenced to a sentence whose execution was suspended for 15 years of execution and also the exercise of social and political rights. In 1973, she would be suspended from college for having been arrested. She would not return until April 25, 1974.
Years later, Maria João returned to Boa Hora. This time, in a very different position: that of Public Prosecutor.
In a text written in 2008recalls the Plenary Court, with its rows of chairs, occupied by PIDE elements and family members, those who suffered the most with the process, who arrived hours in advance to secure a place.
But he also recalls that all of this belongs to the past and the ideas of “freedom, equality and justice” that he brought there finally came to fruition.
Today, on Rua Nova do Almada, in Largo Boa Hora, there are three imposing doors, which Maria João Lobo passed through several times as a defendant and prosecutor. These are the doors of the former Tribunal da Boa Hora.
The former President of the Judicial Employees Union, Fernando Jorge, also passed through them. Closed, but you can peek inside and read on a golden plaque: In the name of all who are free today.
In 1981, those doors were wide open and Jorge’s career as a civil servant was about to begin – and he could have gone through many courts. But Fernando fell in love with Boa Hora to such an extent that no one was ever able to take it from there, not even with professional promotions.
“I sacrificed my career for that court,” he says emotionally. He only abandoned it when he had no choice, behind the one he records as a place “with a certain aura, a mystique”, right there near Chiado, in a bustling Lisbon, and where all the employees knew and respected each other in a very special way. in a way that, he says, does not happen today in the courts.
The idea of the Museum of all
What is intended is that there is a museum there, not of lawyers or judges, but a museum of History, which allows the contact of the new generations of judges with the past. In this case, João Barros, the trial processes were digitalized and worked on interactively.
Where opinions of ideas diverge in relation to the installation of cultural creation and incubation centers. João Correia believes that the museum should extend throughout the building. “The history of justice is long, it is not just administrative production that matters. Space is needed.”
But João Miguel Barros sees great potential for commercial exploitation in the building. “Spaces could be leased to artists and even restaurants could be leased, as happened with the restaurant at the Centro de Arte Moderna at Gulbenkian”.
For now, the museum seems to be the most consensual solution. And the Manifesto achieved, in the words of João Miguel Barros, the merit of “stirring people’s consciences”, and reminding them of what was a forgotten space in the heart of Lisbon. A building that, for Maria João Lobo, is the most emblematic space of Portuguese justice.
Jorge Jorge remembered a conference where Troia crossed, which came with him from Jorge Fernando Sampaio. “I have the greatest respect for the employees”, you will have him here. “When I was studying, I always had doubts I would talk to the employees of Boa Hora. What I learned that court with the clerks!”.
It was a place of learning – and of justice. And what is learned and achieved in the history of a country is to be preserved.
As Maria João Lobo wrote in 2008, Memory makes the identity of a people and its preservation is a duty of a stable and adult democracy, since we, blind and deaf figures and figures in the antechamber of this Court cannot also be deaf and mute to the testimonies of the past, thus allowing their destruction”.
Ana da Cunha
He was born in Porto, 24 years ago, but since 2019 he has made the Alfa Pendular his home. In Lisbon, she discovered a love for stories, listening to and telling them on Avenida de Berna, at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.