Musicians in the Stop shopping center complain about the lack of dialogue with the Chamber, and the municipality proposes a solution to relocate them

The artists whose premises were closed at the Stop shopping center in Porto, represented by the association Alma Stop, in an interview with RTP3 assure that they will not refuse to keep their jobs.

“We do not consider the battle over,” Mariana Costa said, warning that “if the problem is the lack of licenses, then there should be a dialogue with the Chamber.” In this regard, he refers to the fact that “the last meeting with the Chamber was last year.” “Recently, we have not had any contacts, and not because we are not trying,” he assures.

According to the artist, they were always told that “there is no money for work.”

Subsequently, this Wednesday, the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, proposed the Pires de Lima school as a solution for musicians displaced from the Stop shopping center, ensuring that the premises are ready to receive artists at the end of the year.

At a press conference, after a meeting this morning with an association representing artists, Rui Moreira emphasized that the advantage of this school, which will be closed at the beginning of the next academic year, is that it belongs to the municipality, so it will be the municipality to bear the cost of adaptation space. The students will be transferred to the Alexandre Herculano school.

According to the mayor, the musicians liked the solution presented “even because of the proximity” between the stop and the said school, and occupying two floors in Silo Alto “is another solution” pointed out by the municipality. .

EB 2,3 Doutor Augusto César Pires Lima has been taken over by a decentralized municipality and will be vacated in September with the transfer of students to Alexandre Herculano.

“Turning former classrooms into musicians’ rooms is relatively easy. [Os músicos] you can live with Norte Vida, we have rooms available, it’s a huge space that consists of six completely self-contained units. We think this is a great idea for the city,” the mayor said.

Rui Moreira also ensured that the cost of adapting the space would be borne by the municipality, a job the council could not do at the bus stop because the space was not owned by the municipality.

The mayor explained that it would be illegal for the council to carry out the necessary work on the premises, because the building does not belong to them, and the purchase or rental of the premises is not possible.

“I don’t know of any interest in real estate, and I can tell you one thing: the Porto City Council does not allow a hotel to be built there, if that’s the case. (…) The story of what we want is gentrification, which seems like an absurd story to us,” Rui Moreira responded when faced with accusations that alleged real estate interests were at the heart of the store seals.

In order for the council to intervene in the affairs of the Stop, one possibility was to “buy the building”.

“In order to buy a building, we needed a gentleman who presents himself as a representative of the condominium, in order to be able to gather all the owners, because we cannot buy some shares and not buy others, for fear of an impossible situation. co-ownership situations,” he said.

The second solution would be to “rent us [o prédio] and we could carry out work, but even there we needed the whole building,” he said, considering, however, that this solution, along with the first one, is not feasible, because there are more than 170 owners, and some are “more or less impossible to contact” .

The third solution would be to proceed with the expropriation of the building.” But “expropriation is a thorny path, for this we need a declaration of cultural public utility, which can only be issued by the Minister of Culture, with whom I spoke about it. in the morning and did not get himself out of this situation, ”he began with what he said.

However, he stressed, “expropriation in Portugal takes a lot of time,” to which is added time to carry out the necessary work to transform the space.

“The process of expropriation plus work takes at least three years, and the problem of musicians is not in three years, not tomorrow, but today,” he concluded.