On Thursday, 23rd, at 6pm, the Mayor of Pontevedra will be in the café A Brasileira in Chiado, Lisbon, to talk about mobility and share the example of the Galician city in urban innovation as a car-free city. Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores will be in Lisbon exclusively for this debate.

A pioneer in the policy of returning urban space to people and reducing pollution, the mayor of Pontevedra has proved that a city can change forever just by having the courage to remove all cars from the historic centre in 2000.

And Lisbon? Is it on the right track? This is also what we will discuss, trying to learn from this success story that is now followed all over the world. Miguel Anxo Lores has become a star, giving lectures all over the world to show how a city can transform itself in this way and at the same time grow its economy.
This debate, from the series that is discussing Lisbon in the post-covid, is dedicated to the letter B of the city of Lisbon. B – for bicycles, the mode of transport that has seen enormous growth in this pandemic. Will Lisbon’s traffic change forever? Can Lisbon move towards being a car-free city?

Besides the mayor of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores, the debate will also count with the presence of other experts in urban mobility and interested parties and activists on the subject, such as Rita Fernandes Ferreira, bicycle activist, or Mário Alves, representative of the Association for Urban Mobility on Bicycles (Mubi), among others.

Debating Lisbon in Chiado
This is the fourth debate of the series “Lisbon Back” that A Brasileira do Chiado organizes every Thursday since the beginning of July, in a total of six sessions moderated by the journalist Catarina Carvalho and where the impact of Covid-19 in the city is discussed.

Many guests have passed by A Brasileira’s tables to take part in the debates on Covid’s impact on the city: Fernando Medina, Mayor of Lisbon, Ana Jacinto, General Secretary of AHRESP, Tanka Sapkota, restaurant entrepreneur, Carlos Moedas, former European Commissioner and Administrator of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Rui Miguel Nabeiro, CEO of Delta Cafés or Adalberto Campos Fernandes – from Nova School of Public Health and former Minister of Health, Henrique Veiga Fernandes, director of the immunity laboratory of the Champalimaud Institute, or Margarida Tavares, from São João Hospital.

This cycle of debates shows the new life of A Brasileira café. Using an acronym with the letters of the word Lisboa and drawing inspiration from them for the themes L – Lisboa, I – innovation, S – health (in Portuguese “saúde”), B – bicycles, O – olysipo, A – housing (in Portuguese “alojamento”), the debates take place every Thursday, from 6pm to 7pm. The last one will be on August 6 and at the end, a manifesto of six ideas for a (re)new(ed) city will be published by A Brasileira do Chiado.

Restricted debates
Despite public health restrictions, these debates can count on the participation of some members of the public who, to attend in person, must register by sending an email to geral@abrasileira.pt (Participation is free, but places are limited).
The debates may be followed live on the Brasileira’s Facebook page or on Sapo Videos channel.

A tribute to the historical past of A Brasileira do Chiado
One of the oldest and most emblematic cafés in Lisbon invites you to enter and share the meeting point of the intellectuals of yore, in a centenary place that preserves the original charm and elegance. In the city of Fernando Pessoa, and as a tribute to the past and to the many stories that took place in A Brasileira do Chiado, the gatherings will be resumed in a cycle of events open to the community. In a tribute to its past, A Brasileira gives the city back its cultural dynamics, paying homage to the gatherings of intellectuals, artists and writers that used to take place here in the past.

Debate the city. Return to the city. At A Brasileira do Chiado, in July, a cycle of debates about Lisbon to come up with a manifesto of six new ideas for the city after the pandemic.

This is a debate not to be missed, as we return to life in the city and to cultural events at A Brasileira do Chiado.

About A Brasileira do Chiado
Opened on November 19, 1905, in Chiado, A Brasileira was created by Adriano Telles, a former Portuguese immigrant in Brazil. With the freedom achieved in the period following the implantation of the republic in 1910, and due to its privileged location, A Brasileira do Chiado became one of the most popular cafés in Lisbon at the time and was the setting for countless intellectual, artistic and literary gatherings. Renowned writers and artists like Fernando Pessoa and Almada Negreiros found in A Brasileira do Chiado the inspiration for paradoxical concepts and ideas. It was in A Brasileira do Chiado that the expression “bica” was created, which would be the abbreviation for “drink this with sugar” (in Portuguese “beba isto com açúcar”), an incentive to make coffee (a novelty at that time), more pleasant for customers, while creating them a habit and marking a ritual.

A Brasileira do Chiado has kept its identity intact, both due to the specificity of its decoration and the symbolism it represents as it is linked to intellectual circles. Classified as a building of public interest since 1997, it is today one of the oldest and one of only three cafés in Lisbon that have remained open throughout the 20th century. A Brasileira do Chiado has always been a truly iconic spot of the city of Lisbon, earning its place among the most emblematic places in Chiado, as one of the most visited and photographed in the entire city.

The Brasileira do Chiado is a brand of the Value of Time Group, since March 2020.

www.abrasileira.pt