Record-Setting Tourism Revenue in Porto Comes at a Cost
There is a powerful scene in A24s 2019 film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”. The movie was filmed both as a love letter to San Francisco, but also a meditation on its perceived injustices. After overhearing two women complain about San Francisco, the movie’s protagonist, Jimmie Fails, interrupts them. He asks how long they’ve lived in San Francisco. Only about a year.
“You don’t get to hate San Francisco, you don’t get to hate it unless you love it,” said Fails.
The women are perplexed. Mr. Fails is no more qualified to hate San Francisco. Does the city of San Francisco, belong to Jimmie Fails, who has been pushed out of the home he grew up in? Does it also belong to the two young women eager to escape and live in LA instead? Does the city belong to any individual or community of people?
Porto, Portugal has been described as a compact San Francisco. While San Francisco has sprawling suburbs to house nearly one million residents, the people of Porto, a city of just over 287 thousand, have chosen to build upward instead of outward.
After centuries, the Portuguese people have arranged themselves around the river Douro. Now in only the past century, the city is being rapidly reshaped around a booming new industry.
In 2005 Portugal enjoyed a high level of tourism, 11.7% of the nation’s GDP. In the following decade, European and world travel agencies fell in love with Porto. The once under appreciated city was hailed as a “must-see” destination.
Now in 2018, it is estimated that one in every five jobs in the entire country fall under travel & tourism. Those jobs are concentrated in places like Porto, where the mayor released a ten-year tourism plan. The plan, which officials say is “right on track”, seeks to keep breaking records in revenue and helps find locals new year-round jobs.
There are streets and squares all over Porto overrun by tourists. A Chinese traveler stumbles into an ice cream shop looking for directions. A Japanese family listens to an advertisement for a boat tour. A band of young French teens makes Instagram selfies in front of the street sign inscribed “Gustavo Eiffel”. A Portuguese teen and her mother walk across the popular Ponte Luiz bridge designed by Eiffel. The girl is afraid of heights and is squeamishly focused on moving forward without looking down.
Night falls. Beneath the bridge, two young French men go running through the street in underwear. A pack of American college students jostles with them briefly before loudly singing along to John Denver’s “Country Roads” as the music spills out of a nearby restaurant. As the chorus swells a balding German man double fisting beers excitedly joins them in broken English. Both east and west of this restaurant, two locations highlight a Porto that still “belongs to” locals.
On one side of the Ponte Luiz, numerous gift shops and a “Tourism Point” extract dollars from the tourist foot traffic. Just a few hundred feet away, almost completely isolated from tourists, exists a whole neighborhood. These cramped houses occupying the side of a hill are eerily similar to a Brazilian “Favela”. A Favela is a type of neighborhood in Brazil in the boondocks of big cities. Crime-ridden and unregulated, tourists are advised to steer clear. Yet here in Porto this sleepy neighborhood of ordinary residents occupies prime waterfront property in the heart of the city, minding their own business, living the same way they have for the past century.
Just a couple kilometers away on the same side of the river Douro you’ll find an authentic Portuguese restaurant and a four-star boutique hotel. The next building over is an apartment building. A local dries her laundry, brassiere included, for all to see.
Sarah Silva sells flavored jams in her market stand across the river. Silva wakes up at 6 a.m. to prepare her products and often returns home around 10 p.m.
“Almost 100 percent of the buyers don’t speak Portuguese,” Silva says. She loves her lifestyle but remembers this area of Porto differently.
“At this moment, you don’t find Portuguese, you don’t find the people of Porto, you don’t find children swimming in the river,” Silva says.
A healthy walk up a cobblestone road from tourist central, Alexander Torres is a tour guide at W&J Graham’s 1890 Port Lodge. As a Porto native, he gives tours in Spanish and English. Torres loves interacting with travelers from different countries. He’s learning Italian in his free time and may try French next.
“A lot of the genuine side of the city and of the country itself is something I believe tourists, even locals nowadays, don’t have any access to,” Torres said. Torres believes that the authentic Porto experience is not just hidden, but disappearing as the city gives its tourists their full attention.
“That more nitty-gritty of the city is not something you can see anymore, to be honest,” Torres said. Two Porto locals, who certifiably love the city, both financially benefit from the swarms of tourists, yet they together lament that Porto will never be the same.
In the movie “The Last Black Man In San Francisco”, Jimmie Fails fights for ownership of a childhood home in the heart of San Francisco. As he comes to the realization he is not wealthy enough to buy the house, Fails joins his African-American friends and family in the outskirts of the city he still loves. He metaphorically becomes the last black man to be pushed out of San Francisco.
The governments of Porto and Portugal have their foot on the gas pedal, still trying to set tourism records. Maybe in ten years one of the locals I spoke with will write a script for a movie called “The Last Portuguese Man in Oporto”.
I walk down the winding cobblestone streets after speaking with Torres. Next to me is a red advertisement for a nearby Pizza Hut. In an elegant cursive font, the words “Fuck Tourism” have been spray-painted it onto it. At my feet lies a crisp fifty euro bill. I hold it in my hands and look around wondering who let fifty euros slip away so easily. I kept the money and spent it all over Porto. In hindsight, I wish I could track down the graffiti artist and gift them the money.
