Sketches of conviviality
24 self managed residences, inhabited by young people, workers and students, are defending the right to inhabit inside the city, pushing the power of living, dining, thinking and celebrating together in a protected space, not closing the doors but offering a shelter to the entire community.
Thanks to: Enrico, Federico, Gio, Isabella, Piedra, Junior, Florian and all antiguos, moradores and commensals of Palacio da Loucura
Recorded in: Real Republica Palacio da Loucura, Coimbra
LONG STORY SHORT
Welcoming us among valleys serrated by vineyards, olive groves, and dams from where the Douro River emerges, a few kilometers past the border with Spain, is the slippery speech of an passionete chronicler, who lends epic melodies to our ride, up and down to Coimbra, the kingdom’s ancient capital. The turreted building of Portugal’s oldest university whitens overhead, reflected in the waters of the wide, placid Mondego River. It is always a few cats that open the door for us, amid meows and assaults on the dead cat, a technical term for our microphone cover, as Enrico, a physics student and morador for more than a year at Palacio de Loucura, tells us about the centuries-old history of these, to say the least, peculiar residences for young people, students and workers. Even today, the 24 Royal Republics, in their large living rooms with drawings, writings, graffiti and endless sensible ammenities and objects, beside remaining home for their inhabitants, manage to daily welcome people of all ages for lunches, dinners, meetings and parties. It is heartening to encounter small and tenacious garrisons, capable of triggering reflections on community urban living, in a Portugal that, in order to welcome more and more tourists, repairing old moldy working-class neighborhoods, where to enjoy an unmissable avocado sandwich, relies on private investment, airbandb and out-of-tune fado players.