Lisbon or Gotham City?
This week, after lunch, I was on the phone with a friend who, while there were some considerations about his work, blurted out an inadvertent “look, a rat just passed me by my feet… and now another!”. Yes, by the perfect river, in its perfect habitat. What is no longer regular is that they will last and each time they make us think about what is happening in our city. The garbage that accumulates on every corner is increasingly disturbing and disgusting and the danger to public health is all too evident. He’s not very knowledgeable about what you need to go through, just walk around with all your eyes open to see the big dumps that you get to know a little bit aside.
On the esplanades, the amount of flies and mosquitoes that make themselves known prevent us from being comfortable and it is known that flies are usually where the most garbage is. It is enough to sit in the open air to be successively bothered if in part it is a reflection of climate change and not everything is explained by the heat. I know that the problem comes from behind and it is not up to me to analyze the work of the city council or of each joint because I don’t have the data for that, but since it is not getting worse, there doesn’t seem to be any doubts. As the mice are in fact reappearing a lot because of the amount of garbage that is piling up a little all over the city, but they are not the only ones. For example, in the Campo de Ourique neighborhood, every summer I come across more and more cockroaches on the streets and up buildings. People enter everywhere and go, inside their diseases, besides not being what they are of animals, besides being of people like people who live with us.
The Party of Animals and Nature tries at all costs to avoid or kill the pigeons but in downtown Lisbon it is unsustainable to drink a coffee or eat an ice cream rested without being under an umbrella. It seems at a certain point that we are playing Paintball in which the “enemy” shoots blasts indiscriminately soiling our hair or clothes when we don’t hit the food. those diseases that also contaminate various types of animals not only as people but also other animals circulate. It is a time for those who want to know who we are, more and more tourists and foreigners but above all what we want for ourselves, our families and friends.
There is no way to hide that Lisbon suffers from a serious hygiene problem that endangers public health. It reminds me of the famous dark, dangerous and dirty city in the Batman cartoons. Yes, yes, also on the dangerous side, more and more robberies are being reported, not only in Lisbon in the big Portuguese cities and with a crisis on the doorstep it’s good not to think about what could come. It is known that when purchasing power decreases and poverty increases, the more easily succumbs to the apparently simplest and the weakest and most innocent are tempted. It’s time for those who tell us to do something so that we don’t become those people where living is a real ordeal and quality of life is approaching zero.