It is clear: when the PS is not governor and there is no blame in the world. When the PS fails at the local level, it is the fault of the country. And so, in recent days and during the AdisAbebiano show in Almada without water, the emergence of an explanation of the country’s failure is not everything to explain the particular failure of PS in Almada. Ora o que falhou em Almada foi um municipal power abaixo de medio but exímio no dominio da linguagem de kindness progressive. (I don’t want to say that now we are more competent, we simply can’t fail so much and for so long because, fortunately for the country, we are not blessed with the diaphanous mantle of progressive porreirismo that benefits the ex-caviar left now.)
Or what is progressive kindness? Look at the last magazine published by the municipality of Almada whose director is Inês de Medeiros. It dates back to April of this year and the president, director and interviewee Inês de Medeiros declares a kind of planetary megalomania “Almada is a focus of humanity in a world that is increasingly dehumanizing.”
At that point, the municipal management was not unaware that it was responsible for the low renewal of the network (uma das baixas, senão a mais baixa do País); There are network losses that are among the highest in the country; hair laxism in the relationship between illegal recruitment of swimming pools and agroindustry exploration; for the proliferation of clandestine habitations; Pela inattention to problems such as the furos that ficam em Corroios and that motivated a lawsuit in court such as Seixal. The Almadense executive also did not know that the number of inhabitants will increase over two years; that for more than sixty years the Portuguese have sought the beaches of Caparica and that I will not see that the Portuguese go to the beach. But accompanying the statements of the incredible Almadense executive that this publication is an example, the water supply was in no way a concern or a priority.
On the page detailing the priorities orçamentais for this year 2026 (and note that in the municipality of Almada, as happens in the rest, money is not missing), there is a habitation, beach access, a city hall and an animal collection center. But nothing about water. In the long interview with Inês de Medeiros there are no references to water and the vereador himself Luís Palma, who holds the presidency of the Conselho de Administração dos Serviços Municipalizados de Água e Saneamento de Almada (SMAS), prefers to talk about the “offensive in the course of destruction of the National Health Service” instead of reporting here that the SMAS would do to improve its service in Almada. Apart from the only references to water and SMS in this publication, we find a small news item that reports the hiring of more than 16 workers for this service in Janeiro this year. Water is a matter practically ignored in these communications, with the exception of the October 2022 magazine in which Inês de Medeiros, after quoting some of Guterres’s clichés: “The value of water is profound and complex. inescapable of high-quality water.” Follow the pages and pages with explanations of a perfect system with illustrations of reservations, sectioning turns, collectors and branches, all inevitably with a lot of blue.
Meanwhile, Almada has not subsidized the lost water – there is a network that is not being renewed and unaccounted for access points that are proliferating. Crediting the propaganda, Almada lived in the best of two possible worlds, not that he respected the potable water distribution network. It was in 2022. A reality was very different and has been happening since then.
What is happening this summer of 2026 is precisely a clash between the reality and propaganda of the municipality and also between the arguments of the left and the reality of the country: as those who do not live in Almada know, and that when we open the window we see water running, it is a lie that Portugal has not been able to do or necessary in this matter. In 2026, the Portuguese will have, in their largest watershed, access to quality and quantity water. This does not mean the long times that Portuguese homes always have reserve jugs for those days when water is missing or containers to fetch from the nearest chafariz. Since drinking torneira water was not an option in the Algarve. There are obviously faults caused by faults, breaks in the network, works… but this is the same: faults.
What is now going to happen in Almada is nothing like Portugal in 2026 but in this country that has been going on for some decades, in that we are gathered together in a Paleolithic discussion about the “water of Almada” and “the water of Seixal” (as the herefero tivesse walls will separate them!) between two autarchs, Inês of Medeiros and Paulo Silva, who was never able to advance towards an integrated management of the aquifer, wanting among them, wanting like the other autarchs who depend on this aquifer for the supply of their municipalities.
The lack of water in Almada is not an example of the country’s failure, as some socialists want us to believe. The fez country progresses visíveis no supply of drinking water. O que falhou em Almada was the magical socialist thought.
