A memory of the Glória elevator

In 1994 and 1995, I was in the 12th grade. To prepare for college, I attended extra Philosophy and History classes at Externato Acrópole. There, we studied for the Specific Exams, which had replaced the troublesome General Entrance Exam. This meant I had a dual student life, between Liceu de Queluz, my regular school, and Chiado, where Externato Acrópole was located (where my mother was an English and German teacher). Since Liceu had night classes, with a fantastic schedule between 7 PM and 10 PM, Lisbon got the sun for the majority of my day. That was the year I began to feel like Lisbon was my own.

Like the vast majority of kids from the capital's suburbs, I was born in Lisbon. At the time, no one growing up on the Sintra Line was born on the Sintra Line, except in the event of an accident: there wasn't even an Amadora-Sintra Hospital. Therefore, I belonged to the large group whose identity card bore the name "São Sebastião da Pedreira." Interestingly, I wasn't born at the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital, but nearby, at the Cabral Sacadura Clinic. The fact is that, despite being born in Lisbon, a kid growing up in its suburbs doesn't have a direct connection to it. The capital was a place for strolls, not our true place.

This began to change for me in 1994. I went to Lisbon more than once a week, and I began to feel it as a real part of my life, more than just a detail on my ID. I never became a Lisbonite, but the truth is that Lisbon is the city of my heart. I love it like a clumsy lover, incapable of the ultimate step of proposing marriage. Lisbon is mine, but I've never lived with it. I go to her almost every day, but she would never acknowledge knowing my name. She officially ignores me, but every day I get closer to her, never indifferent to her haughty charms. She is my great unrequited love.

The beginning of my dizzying love for Lisbon began mainly in Rossio, Chiado, and Restauradores. By 1994, I already had the idea that I was a punk. So, I alternated my school trips with visits to Loja 67, where I bought my first Doc Martens, which cost me months of savings, the astronomical sum at the time of 15 contos and five hundred (roughly 77 euros and 50 cents—even today, that amount seems like a fortune in footwear). It was this axis from the train station to Externato Acrópole and to visit Loja 67, near record stores like Bimotor, that served as the route for my burgeoning life in the capital.

To get from Chiado to Restauradores, I had to walk down Calçada da Glória. Both then and in the years that followed, I rarely took the elevator. Savings and a youthful youth kept me walking down that steep street. Because of this, the elevator was more my companion on the way up and down than my transportation. I got used to, for example, listening for it so that, by staying close to its track, I could stay far enough away to avoid being run over. In the 1990s, it was truly an elevator, not a tourist attraction. We didn't think of it as a monument. It was simply part of everyday Lisbon. And being just that, it was a lot.

In a way, that everyday Lisbon no longer exists. This probably didn't just happen to Lisbon, but to any city that, in this century where travel is a must-have for life, becomes just another banal pilgrimage of bourgeois experiences. I don't want to write this as someone lamenting, because I don't believe in lament as an attitude to face the present. After all, Lisbon didn't die in the tourist mosh pit that modern cities have become. They all survive, becoming worse while also resisting the worst that is imposed upon them. Lisbon is a city, and cities outlast their citizens.

When I heard about the accident at the Elevador da Glória last Wednesday, I was in disbelief. Memories inevitably flooded my mind. 1994 returned, and every year since, ever more distant from that steep sidewalk, but never forgotten. On the one hand, many of us have abandoned places like these to the hordes that have taken over them on a zombie tour. On the other, they have never ceased to be ours because our history is only erased when we want to deny it. And no one has ever wanted to deny the Elevador da Glória. These days I've thought even more about the city I love most and how I long for it to rise again and again. And so it will, I'm sure.