The time boost. Here they come. Like backhoe loaders at the new airport. This week the Lisbon City Council gave the motto: “Airport now. We need an airport. If it is in a place or nourishes, that must be a decision”, said a name promoted by the lobby of the Hotel Industry Association of Portugal. Above all, it hurts to think that Carlos Moedas was European Commissioner for Science and for him “technical everything” is a prerequisite. The airport is “already”. The environment of the city and the region, the birdlife and the estuary, the risk of rising water levels, or the brutal impact of creating an airport city, well, these are “technical” formalities. Like: ship it over there. It’s for walking. Already.

But the march to the airport given by Carlos Moedas is the same as that of António Costa and even Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, successively. It is not surprising that neither he, nor his predecessor, nor Turismo de Portugal, nor the hotel industry, give us studied elements, on this: if we move Lisbon’s airport capacity from the current 35 million to 50 million passengers, where do you put more people in tourist areas? People complain about traffic, noise and demographic saturation. Do we accentuate the problem to the point of xenophobia against tourists? Did we kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?

It is not to destroy tourism that it is worth NOT building a new airport in Lisbon. In, the ability to rehabilitate the airport to be an opportunity to discover this Alentejo treasure, along with an automatic quick call connection to the capital. It takes place with an air base in Monte Real, which would boost tourism, and opens a new religious chapel Fátima-Eu for the axes plus the axes LeiriaAveiro, Guarda-Vis an alternative to CoimbraAveiro. The Monte Real air base is 1h from Lisbon and Alfa passes by. The airstrip already exists. To say that the military has no alternative to Monte Real is just unbelievable.

Finally: is Lisbon airport irreparable? Is not. Coins spoke of the “four-hour wait” to get from the plane to the airport door. All that we use Portela that we don’t know is the rule (ANA must show the numbers). But this is not even the main reason for the malfunction. The real issues are, again, in the Express da Vinci license license, improve security to over pen hesitation the door. Then, the problems of the SEF in the peaks of arrivals of intercontinental or British flights. Next, the postponement of the completion of the works to support the main runway – is that increasing the number of flights in Portela depends on the change of location of the control tower, an issue that the State does not resolve within the State itself. Finally, the Ministry of Infrastructure is also unable to agree with the Ministry of Defense to remove Figo Maduro from the base and generate more parking space.

Obviously, the easiest solution is to raze the Tagus estuary in Montijo or spend almost 10 billion just at Alcochete airport (outside the accesses, railway, etc.). But you have to double Lisbon in height for this to make sense. Many futuristic films show what these totally separate cities can look like, in a controlled environment and putrefaction. If we align with the priority of concrete, the cavaquismo/Socratism that we curse so much with its strategic mistakes, is repeated now. With our “progressive” applause.

Journalist