The destruction of Lisbon
A German diver in Palawan told me in 1993 that tourism was like cancer: “it destroys everything in its path”. As we talked, about 50 meters away, workers were installing the empteenth stilted cottage on the seashore that season; like all the others, this cottage, too, lacked any sort of arrangement for sewage disposal.
Tourism certainly destroyed every sea-side location where I have lived in the last two decades, turning each from a quaint little town where humble life rolled on leisurely into an unlivable monstrosity, a shopping mall on the sea, a busy belching traffic nightmare in season, a dead eyesore off. For 15 years, between 1995 and 2010 my life was a cat-and-mouse chase, a dog-fight, a running battle — with me trying to find an unspoiled place to live in and tourism following within a few years; first a cottage at a time, but eventually the full hog, with full blown articles in the press world-over that X was now The Place To Go.
Eventually, I threw in the towel on sea-side towns and decided to duck the wave by going in the opposite direction, into the city.
But if you think that tourism only destroys beaches in third world countries and we in the first world are safe, think again.
My new city — an European Capital — has now been officially made The New Place To Go To, a phenomenon stoked by fake advertisements paid for the by government (the adverts feature doctored photos of Lisbon making it look more Paris). (A former ad executive, I never cease to wonder how effective advertising is, how it works, how people trust it. Don’t they know TV lies? Do they know anything?)
Yesterday I walked down Rua Augusta to appraise the season’s damage. It exceeded my worst fears. What was once a traditional premium shopping street, and, in recent years, due to crisis, became somewhat romantically down-at-heel, has been completely transformed, in a mere three months, into a tourist drag. Gone are jewelers selling Portuguese hand-crafted jewelry, gone are leather-goods shops selling Portuguese shoes and handbags, gone are Portuguese eateries serving stufado and cafetarias serving salgados and afternoon tea. They have all been replaced by ice-cream McParlors and frozen pizza places and outdoor tables serving industrial snacks and canned drinks and playing vaguely ethnic world music: all according to the formula which works world over: familiar (the hell with new and exotic, who ever said tourism was about discovering or learning?), low price but high margin (a 3 euro key-chain offers a 300% markup for the vendor).
Rua Augusta now looks the way the main street of San Giminiano already looked in 2005 – lined up and down both sides of it with tourist-pandering junk-outlets. Back in 2005 I walked up that main drag because I had to — some paintings I had to see were in a church at the top of it; but to my amazement I watched people sit in those sidewalk cafes of that street, taking in “the atmosphere”.
Atmosphere? What atmosphere? You can get the same “atmosphere” at your local mall. Why fly six thousand miles to get the same on another continent?
Notes on The Cultured Life 
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