Tomorrow, 4 July 2025, new housing demolition operations are scheduled to take place in the Bairro de Santa Filomena, in Amadora, without any alternative housing being provided for the residents and with only 48 hours’ notice. These actions are taking place exactly ten years after demolitions began in the neighbourhood, without any substantial change in public housing policies to protect the rights of its residents.

The FILMASPORA exploratory project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and hosted by the Institute of Contemporary History at NOVA FCSH, has dedicated a significant part of its research to the creation of an audiovisual archive on the Bairro de Santa Filomena.

As a research team dedicated to the study and audiovisual documentation of the neighbourhood produced over the last two decades, we express our strongest repudiation of public policies that continue to promote the physical elimination of housing and the consequent dismantling of historically marginalised communities — communities whose presence and history have been systematically silenced in official discourses and excluded from the decision-making processes that define their destiny.

We firmly reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the memory, dignity and rights of these populations, whose existence has been marked by continuous processes of invisibilisation, forced displacement and structural vulnerability.

We therefore call for critical, in-depth, and urgent reflection on the social, human and ethical impacts of these interventions, which jeopardise not only the fundamental rights of the citizens directly affected, but also the preservation of the historical, social and cultural fabric of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area.

The FILMASPORA team

Photo: © Corsino Furtado