History of Lisbon VII
Lisbon between Europe and Africa
After finishing the wars and conflicts between conservatives and liberals, Lisbon, having lost the gold and monopoly of products from Brazil, the source of all their wealth since the end of the sixteenth century was in a desperate economic situation. In northern Europe, the nations began industrialization, and enriched with the trade of the Americas (England would dominate the Brazilian market) and Asia. The delay of Portugal seemed irreversible.
Unable to definitely defeat the Liberals, and frightened by the economic disaster that conservative policies had led Portugal since the sixteenth century, in contrast to the success of liberal England, France and the Netherlands, the Conservatives who dominated the country and the capital ceded partially . Limited reforms would be allowed in exchange for keeping the spirit Catholic, rural, conservative and political power be kept in the hands of large landowners. Elections would be held but only by those qualified by hefty property. The patronage of the State would be shared with the new class and were granted titles to the big bourgeois and capitalist. However remained privileges and state subsidies to the ruling classes, and industrialization would be limited to these interests.
In this period Lisbon is poor and dirty when compared to cities of northern Europe. Almost all its commercial importance comes down to maintaining monopoly on the products of the Portuguese colonies, especially Angola and Mozambique. The country itself is described in London, Paris and Berlin as an extension of North Africa, ie a territory unable to govern themselves. Begin the first emigrations no longer govern and direct to other lands, but rather to work from the lowest social scale: leave for Brazil many thousands of poor people of Lisbon. Given the poverty and backwardness of most of the country arises in Lisbon a very rich upper class who, as if blind, spends and behaves as if it belonged to the elite of northern Europe, while ruling a country rural and backward, bowed by protectionism economic, lack of education and health care provided by the state. With decreasing importance of land as a factor of wealth, nobility and gentry territorial orbit the Royal Court, luxuriously living allowances and salaries distributed through this with the taxes collected to the poor. Establishes a regime "of mild manners," where cease the persecution, but also reform, and corruption is routine and almost always go unpunished.
Among the inert and corrupt rulers, there are some who best understand the need for change. Fontes Pereira de Melo is the minister who fight for more economic liberalization and industrialization. Several economic and industrial developments are encouraged.
A network of railways is built, connecting Lisbon to Porto and involved cities, from the two new train stations, the station of Santa Apolonia and Rossio Station. The electric light is deployed in 1878, replacing gas lighting. In urban terms, are created the first master plans. It is necessary to change the image of dirty capital that shocks visitors from northern Europe. The inhabitants are then encouraged to use tiles or paint the facades color pink, according to municipal guidelines (still dominate the center of town with many buildings rose tiles of this period). Also created are the first systems plumbing, sewage and water treatment, responding to cholera attacks that kill thousands. Using the new proletariat miserable, you can now recalcetar the old and new routes (including Rossio) as had been done on a smaller scale in the sixteenth century, with the old technique of cobblestone. Other important innovations are the cars "Americans" (collective passenger vehicles on rails pulled by horses), introduced in 1873 (in 1901 would be replaced by electric, which still exist today), lifts (funiculars and cable worm) that are installed in several of the hills after 1880.
The cultural and commercial center of the city then passes to the Chiado. With the old streets of the already occupied, the owners of new stores and clubs set up on the hill attached, which quickly turns. Here are founded the Club, Literary Guild as the famous stories of Eca de Queiroz, and frequented by Almeida Garrett, Ramalho Ortigão, Guerra Junqueiro, Alexandre Oliveira Martins and Herculano. Settle even clothing stores of Paris fashions and other luxury goods, style department stores Harrods of London or Paris from Galeries Lafayette and new Luso-Italian cafes, as Tavares and Cafe Chiado.
New buildings and roads open their new neighborhoods north of Lisbon, stimulated by the city backed by the bourgeoisie. In 1878 the Public Road is demolished and replaced in 1886 by the new Liberty Avenue, designed by Ressano Garcia. The Avenue has more than one kilometer and extends through farmland, anticipating urban sprawl. It is created from it throughout the urban central axis of the city (now expanding again in 2005). At the top of the avenue is built to Marques de Pombal Square, which run the new avenues of New Lisbon. New Avenues build these mansions elites of Lisbon, near the new public buildings such as the Liceu Camões (1907) and Alfredo da Costa Maternity (1909). The most important of these is the Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo, northeast, ending in the new Praça Duque de Saldanha. Hence part to another great avenue, but today the Republic of Ressano Garcia initially. In the vicinity of this is the Campo Grande (then a field and not a Garden) and the new bullring Campo Pequeno, finished in 1892 in a style neomourisco. New neighborhoods are built nearby to plans similar to Pombaline: the neighborhood of Campo de Ourique westward and eastward of Estefania. Along the neighborhood's great new Estefania is built Dona Amelia Avenue (now Avenida Almirante Reis), linking it to the Martim Moniz. All these new buildings tranformam the city. The new geographical center of Lisbon's Baixa and the Marquis is just the location of the big stores. To the east lay up small middle class and the people, while to the west the higher middle classes and the wealthy bourgeoisie.
Culturally this is the period where bullfighting and fado change into a popular entertainment. To them we can joins the popular theater or musical theater (invented in Paris) that with the old and erudite comedies and dramas, dispute the new theaters of the capital. An entertainment typically Portuguese this time is the Oratory, where actors corrupt the ancient art of Father António Vieira sung in arguments, flowery and almost always superficial vying with prizes. Arise even the first large public gardens, imitating London's Hyde Park and the gardens of the German cities: the first is the Jardim da Estrela, where the bourgeois wandering on Saturdays and Sundays.
Occasionally the upper classes are now a mixture of noble conservatives who are reluctantly forced to accept some ideas and bourgeois liberals graduates who adhere to many conservative ideas. To them join the Brazilians, the poor and poorly educated immigrants who had grown rich in Brazil and returned to the city in craving acceptance in high social circles. Lisbon is the industrial center of the country (although its industrialization be minimal compared to England or Germany). The poorer classes Lisbon grow exponentially with the arrival of the first proletarians who work in the new factories. They often live in slums and degraded, where raging cholera and other diseases, working all day just to have enough to eat.
Liberals betrayed the middle class, whose taxes pay for the luxuries of the upper classes without receiving anything in return, renew into a new more radical liberal movement that threatens not only the old landowners but also the new barons and viscounts dependent of the capitalist State.
The alliance between the workers and the more educated middle classes comes the new Radical Liberalism, better known as Republicanism because of his opposition to the alliance of former Liberal Monarchist now dependent on the state (the bourgeois titrated) and Conservatives (old aristocracy) Monarchists: large capitalists, landowners and dependents of the court.
Tomorrow The Revolution of 1910. The period of the First Republic.
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Thanks, looking forward to the next installment of The History of Lisbon!
