Twelve determined pensioners refused this morning to leave the apartment block they have called home for decades.
Edifício Jardim, or Prédio Coutinho as it has come to be called, has been earmarked for demolition by the Polis programme (which has ordered countless demolitions throughout the country over the years).
The reason given is that it is a form of ‘visual pollution’, ruining the skyline over downtown Viana do Castelo.
Built in the mid-1970s, the plan is for a new municipal market to be built in the building’s place.
Originally occupied by 300 people, the final ‘dogged dozen’ are refusing to budge.
With legal bids put in years ago now overruled, the pensioners stood their ground today as police moved in with orders to clear the building.
At least one was close to tears as he told reporters that the authorities were stealing from them.
It’s not simply a question of these people not wishing to be hounded from homes that they purchased perfectly legally decades ago, it is that the compensation they are being offered is, they say, derisory.
TSF Rádio gives the figure of €200,000 – but residents say to buy an equivalent apartment in the same area will cost them double that, or close to double.
Lawyer Magalhães Santana will now be trying a new legal routes to stave off evictions.
He told reporters camped outside the 13th storey building today: “We are talking about very elderly people.
“This is not a case of illegal habitation. This is a building that was legally constructed, purchased by people with money they had earned, who are now being violently coerced into leaving the place in which they decided to live”.
For now, the ‘dogged dozen’ have evaded the June 24 deadline to leave their homes.
What happens next depends very much on what the courts make of their lawyer’s next pitch.
Says TSF, the €1.2 million demolition contract has already been awarded to Braga group DST – standing for Domingos da Silva Teixeira – a company that describes its vision as “to be recognized as a driving force in setting trends in the poetics of building the future”.
