Porto, Oct. 24, 2025 (Lusa) - The arrival of the high-speed line in Porto threatens to demolish the living memories of those who have lived near Campanhã station for decades, including the historic Buraquinho do Freixo, a 40-year-old tavern that may close.
Tools, posters of Madonna and other “saints”, small wild snakes packed in formaldehyde, and the indispensable FC Porto emblem make up the humble antechamber of a plot of land that 86-year-old Alberto Cathou, who has lived in the Agra neighbourhood since 1959, has cultivated after a long life of work.
"It's all fruit trees. There are fig trees, magno trees, pomegranate trees, I've had a huge persimmon tree for years, but the persimmon trees are there for the birds, because I'm not able to climb up there," as is the case "with the magno trees," he tells Lusa on his improvised balcony, with a luxurious view over the River Douro, which can be reached through a fragile metal door.
Until he arrived here, Alberto was a goldsmith, worked in Mário Navega's crockery factory, right next door, "for 20 years" and then went "to another one in Rua do Heroísmo, a dyeing factory" for "eight or 10 years" and, at the age of 55, went unemployed, retiring at 60.
"This is a shack I made that belonged to [a house with] a little gate that's there, that had houses, and it's all uninhabited, there are only walls. And since you don't live here, you let me cultivate the yard more than 20 years ago," he says, with a faraway look in his eyes.
Her end-of-life routine is now threatened by the high-speed line project, whose Environmental Compliance Report for the Execution Project (RECAPE) for the Porto-Oiã section confirms that houses on Rua da China and Travessa da Presa da Agra will be demolished, right under the current railway line, which will be extended for the new project.
"I just wish they'd do this work 10 years from now, when I'm no longer here. I want to be sheltered in a house. Another half a dozen years and I'd be here until the end. Now they've thought of this..." he lamented.
Further down the street is António Araújo, 65, whose door was knocked on by a Luso-Roux team in March to ask for the land registry of the house he's lived in for almost two decades.
"And then they came back here a month and a half ago, in September. They went round looking at all the houses inside and taking photos (...) they showed me the project and the red line that [delimited] the land whose buildings are to be demolished," he told Lusa.
On his balcony, from where he can see "from Valongo to the Corte Inglés in Gaia", António needs to take a deep breath to finish describing what he's been going through in recent months: "it's not easy, nobody can imagine what this is like, going to bed ... [and not being able to sleep]".
A while ago, when the municipal company Go Porto redeveloped her street and part of Travessa do Freixo, hope flourished.
"We [neighbours] thought: they're doing work on the street, the sewage and water systems have been repaired... what are they spending so much money on? In principle, we shouldn't have to live. But no... we've already had to put our heads on one side, because there's no chance," he said resignedly.
The resident of Travessa Presa de Agra spoke to Lusa after going to Buraquinho do Freixo, a typical restaurant in the area, which, more than that, is also a meeting point for the local community and workers, from construction labourers to drivers.
Alberto Sousa e Silva, 70, who owns the restaurant and lives in the house above it - they are part of the same building at the junction of Rua da China and Rua do Freixo - is surprised at the progress of the high-speed line project, which, however, still needs approval from the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) and Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP).
"I know next to nothing. They say that the horned man is the last to know," the manager of the 40-year-old business told Lusa.
For Alberto Sousa e Silva, the approach of the technicians hired by the AVAN Norte consortium (Mota-Engil, Teixeira Duarte, Alves Ribeiro, Casais, Conduril and Gabriel Couto) "hasn't been correct", complaining that he learnt about the news about his own property "from the news", and "only then did some gentlemen come", about two months ago.
The community's reaction to the news has also been "bad".
"These are people who have lived here for 40 and 50 years, elderly people, who always walk around with their hearts in their hands, asking this person and that person," he says, saying that "people walk around here and don't know if it's going to go here, if it's going to go there, when it is or when it isn't."
For the restaurant manager, "that's wrong" and "playing with people", and he's waiting to see if the line's builders "compensate him enough".
"If I have to go, [let it be] now, to sort out my life. At this age, 70, what am I going to do? I have a house, [I'm] working more or less, thank God — where am I going to go now? It's complicated," he concludes.
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