Binaural Nodar, the Municipality of Castro Daire through its Municipal Library and the House of Castro Daire in Lisbon, announce the event “DA SERRA PARA A FÁBRICA” (“From the mountain to the factory”) which will take place on Saturday 24th October starting at 17h00 at the Municipal Library of Castro Daire as part of the  project “Where the city loses its name” Creative Europe which included LaFundició (Catalonia, Spain), Binaural Nodar (Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal) and Fundatia Altart (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) as main partners .

This event culminates 30 months of work dedicated to the recollection and diffusion of memories of a very specific diaspora: that of the countryside to the city, that of people from the Montemuro mountain range, particularly from the municipality of Castro Daire in the district of Viseu, which throughout the twentieth century emigrated to the eastern part of Lisbon, where today the civil parish of Marvila is located, to work in factories, warehouses, stowage, small grocery stores and so many other trades.

These families initially lived almost all in shantytowns, authentic rural villages in the city and later headed for apartments, either through their association with housing cooperatives like the one at the PRODAC neighborhood, or because they simply managed to earn enough to buy a house.

Decades passed. Many stayed, others returned to the land, almost all ended up forming a half-urban and half-rural condition.

“FROM THE MOUNTAIN TO THE FACTORY” will consist of three complementary moments:

  1. An audiovisual and participative performance with the presence of former residents in Marvila, with texts written and read by Luís Costa and with video by Maile Colbert.
  2. A moment of online communication between communities that participated in the European project in Castro Daire (Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal), L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Catalonia, Spain) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania) that will include the sharing of gastronomic recipes from the three territories.
  3. A retrospective exhibition of objects, photographs, soundscapes and audiovisual recordings, curated by Luís Costa, Liliana Silva and Marta Carvalhal and which will be open at the Castro Daire Municipal Library until the end of November 2020.

Thanks to the House of Castro Daire in Lisbon for hosting several moments the project, to the PRODAC Neighborhood Residents Association for providing old photographs from the shantytown and the pre-fab houses that were later built, to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, for providing old photographs of the National Soap Society factory and the people who lived or still live in the Marvila area and who agreed to share their memories.