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Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

1 Nov

At this moment 266 years ago the ground began to shake in the Portuguese capital, marking the start of the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, a catastrophe which costs thousands of lives, revolutionized European philosophy and kicked off a new era of enlightened urban planning.

Mid-XVIII century Lisbon was one of the most beautiful — and wealthy — cities in the world. As capital of the vast, Portuguese empire, it was the major port through which spices from the East Indies, ivory from Africa and gold from the Americas entered Europe.

As a series of remarkable paintings from the renaissance show, Lisbon was a cosmopolitan metropolis in which people from throughout the empire intermingled and did business together.

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Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

20 Aug

Yesterday I woke up in Córdoba, Spain. Besides being one of Andalucía’s most beautiful municipalities, it’s also the European city with the highest average Summer temperatures (the thermometer marked 38ºC / 100ºF while I was there). Some quick takes on its urban design:

Córdoba started off as a Roman settlement, but the old part of the city that we know today — a UNESCO world heritage site — was shaped by the period of Moorish domination (929-1236), with a lot of common sense solutions incorporated for dealing with the heat.

The most obvious is urban planning based on narrow streets, something pretty standard in almost all Andalusian towns. The tight corridors means that you have a degree of shade at nearly all times of day, making baking-hot summer days much more tolerable.

Read 14 tweets

Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

17 Aug

This week I’ve been working remotely from Matalascañas, a beach in Spain where my parents bought a house in the 80’s. Growing up in Miami meant my siblings and I were constantly exposed to Spanglish, but my folks — Cuban exiles — were determined that we learn proper Castilian.

They scoured the Mediterranean coast looking for an English-free spot to spend the Summers, but in town after town they found drunk Brits. But on one trip they stumbled upon this Atlantic beach, an for Seville’s working class with not a single foreigner in sight.

Located nearly an hour south of Seville and accessible only via bad country roads, Matalascañas was a barely developed backwater back then, just a few buildings on a stretch of beach surrounded by Doñana National Park (home to the ever-endangered Iberian lynx).

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Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

4 Mar

@liliebayer

COVID means Portugal will have a hard time hosting in-person events during its turn in the rotating presidency of the Council. Why is Lisbon still spending hundreds of thousands of euros on event spaces, wine and clothing? @liliebayer & I looked into it.
politico.eu/article/portug…

Rotating Council presidencies give the EU's less prominent member countries a chance to shine and many have used their six months in the spotlight to play to home audiences and hype their own importance by hosting events that lure international leaders to their countries.

But the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, and last year Croatia and Germany — the two countries that held the rotating presidency during 2020 — were quick to revamp their events schedule and make nearly everything virtual.

Read 19 tweets

Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

18 Feb

@POLITICOEurope

Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

Here's a quick thread based on my @POLITICOEurope story on Portuguese energy poverty 👇

politico.eu/article/freezi…

When I lived in Lisbon my friends and I joked that although the Portuguese were famous for melancholia, uncharacteristic (and unrealistic) optimism defined their approach to thermal insulation: homes seemed to be built as if the weather was expected to be perfect year-round.

While the weather is, indeed, really great for most of the year, it can also be really awful sometimes. In the Summer temperatures can shoot up to truly unbearable levels for weeks on end, and in the Winter the icy humidity can easily make you feel like you're freezing 24/7.

Read 23 tweets

Aitor Hernández-Morales

@aitorehm

17 Feb

In 2010, ahead of the 100th birthday celebrations for Madrid's Gran Vía, architect Miguel Oriol produced plans for a makeover of the Spanish capital's most iconic thoroughfare: his scheme saw cars mostly banished and the 1.3 km street turned into a lush garden.

The centenary celebrations came and went without anything happening with that scheme, which would have involved creating a huge subterranean tunnel and a massive parking lot under the street (because it was 2010 and the idea of actually banishing cars was #TooCrazy).

During her brief spell heading Madrid's City Hall (2015-2019), progressive mayor Manuela Carmena concluded that, in lieu of a big dig project, it made more sense to adopt on-surface measures to squeeze cars out of the central street. Lanes were reduced, sidewalks expanded.

Read 13 tweets

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