Chronicle.
This fictitious inauguration was a request to Lisbon City Council to fix our city's fountains. We need to bring free drinking water back into public spaces.
Last Sunday, April 7th, the Intendente Fountain was "inaugurated" by the "Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas" (Vitor Belanciano), accompanied by "Prime Minister Luís Montenegro" (Elisabete Gonçalves), and by "director of EPAL, José Sardinha" (Lia Marques).
The taps have been turned off for too long, but on this day the Intendente Fountain started giving water again. The "Mayor of Lisbon" marked the moment:
"Today, April 7, we are gathered here to jointly inaugurate the restoration work of the Intendente Fountain. This fountain, which has been closed for far too long, will now once again supply its citizens with water. Because water is a right and not a business. And so the days of the bottled water industry, which does nothing to help this climate disaster, are over. From today, the sun will shine and the springs will flow. None of my customers will have to beg for glasses of water in their coffee anymore. I won't end my presidency with a tap turned off, abandoned, forgotten. And that I promise you from the bottom of my heart. These drinking fountains in the city bring health, hygiene and equality. They are an urban facility that has always served as a place to meet, rest and gather; an important service for the population; a public utility that reactivates life in the public space. I, the Mayor of Lisbon, will now cut this ribbon so that glasses of water can be given away."
- the "speech" of the "Mayor of Lisbon"
After the important speech, the ribbon-cutting and the well-deserved applause, the "President" handed out glasses of water to the people who attended the ceremony and all the people who passed by during the afternoon.
This fictitious inauguration was a request to Lisbon City Council to fix our city's fountains - a public utility that brings equality, health and hygiene; a collective urban facility; a social element of the city. We need to bring free drinking water back into the public space. The drinking fountains have been forgotten, abandoned, disconnected (they say for our safety, because the water is no longer consumable; but if that's why they were closed, then get them back). They were built to give people water, not to be nothing more than monuments. Water fountains for drinking, resting and washing hands (during the pandemic we were asked to think of others and wash our hands throughout the day).
Without realizing it, public space is reinventing itself, and not in a good way. The branded bottled water industry has become present everywhere - in corner stores, cafés, vending machines in hospitals, universities, public transport stations...
One result of the commercialization of water was the normalization of the disappearance of springs. Every fountain that still flows is a resistance to its monetization.
