When I think about what the last 5 years would’ve been like without Mensagem de Lisboa, I mostly think about the people—the “true-blue” Lisbonites (as Pierre Aderne, one of them, would say) who would’ve stayed invisible if their stories hadn’t been told here.
Forgive me for bragging, but that’s where Mensagem really made a difference.
Would anyone have ever heard of Dona Florentina, the lady who created a garden in the middle of her building’s grungy backyard in Alvalade.
Or Miguel Macedo and Silke Jellen, who put out flower beds to keep cars off their street in Arroios.
Or Nuno Prates—a “guerrilla gardener” who actually got the city’s laws changed regarding public planters. And then there’s Leonardo Rodrigues, who started by telling us that story and ended up as our resident columnist for all things flowers and trees.
Then you have Stephen O’Reagan and Rita Ansome—an Irishman and a Latvian—both featured for their love of Lisbon through their project, People of Lisbon. He became a lifelong friend; she’s still our photographer today.
Fátima Cardoso, who cooked from sunrise to sunset at the Galinheiras primary school so no one would go hungry during Covid.
Or Jorge Costa, our columnist whose “homeless” story moved all of Lisbon and introduced us to Nuno Markl—who gave us a huge initial boost.
Manuel Banza, who’d done a study on Lisbon as a “15-minute city” and walked us through the concept, changing our lives (as we changed his). Laura Almodóvar, who rolled up her sleeves to run a neighborhood radio station in a place that doesn’t even exist anymore. Or Manuel Lopes, the postman who gave names to so many streets in this city…
Back at the start, five years ago, a journalist asked: “Aren’t you afraid of running out of things to talk about?” Ferreira Fernandes and I just laughed. Today, we could spend all day telling you the stories we’ve already found, but even longer showing her the endless list of tips and topics we still have left to cover.
It’s always been about that same perspective I wrote about in our very first text: “the people who make the city.” Around here, there’s no such thing as a story that’s “too small,” because those are exactly the threads that weave a city together.
In the journalism world, people talk a lot about our “usefulness.” They question it every day as the world pulls in different directions, autocracies gain ground, and people lose faith.
Here at Mensagem, we’ve always believed you fight all that right on your own street. With your neighbors. With empathy. That’s what happens when we actually get to know one another. Belonging, being part of something, building ties. That’s our mission. To be the place where Lisbon comes to be together. To meet. Not through the “breaking news,” but through the little stories.
As Richard Gingras (former VP of News at Google) said in a recent piece:
“The mission of the press should be to provide our societies with the information they need to understand their communities and the world outside of their communities, thereby enabling them to be informed citizens. This includes not just the major stories, but also the smaller, everyday narratives. Journalism should help us understand our communities, enjoy them, and strengthen them. It should help us appreciate the differences across communities and find value in those distinctions. It should celebrate a community’s hopes and dreams, not merely focus on what has gone wrong.”
And I’d add: it should provide hope by presenting solutions to problems instead of just pointing them out.
Has a lot changed in these five years? You bet.
Society is more polarized, the vibe is harsher. We all know we’re walking on thin ice. If it breaks, we could sink into a world of hating “the other” and pure rage—everything that destroys a city and a society.
Was everything easy in these five years?
Nothing is easy in a field with no obvious business model and constant threats. Global media is in crisis. Interestingly, the ones surviving are the giant English-language conglomerates and the small ones that managed to truly serve their communities.
Together, we built what we have here. With your support—and that of A Brasileira do Chiado and the Valor do Tempo group, the partners who made this possible. In 2025, we became sustainable in a way we’re really proud of, through partnerships with entities (public and private) that actually value the work we do for the city.
There’s still much left to say about what we achieved. Like the murals with Vhils and Nuno Saraiva, based on work that turned into books we published. The awards won. The grants and projects in communities that never get mentioned in the media.
But also the people who produced all of this: the ones who wrote these stories with us—the freelancers and our “Olisipographer” [Lisbon-expert] team. The ones editing every day. The photographers. The illustrators. Everyone who supported us with their kindness in so many ways.
To all of them, a huge thank you for sharing this love for Lisbon that is the theme of this anniversary.
And to you, too!
Happy Anniversary—this story belongs to you, too.
We have a dream of being fully supported by our community members—we’ll get there one day.
Catarina Carvalho
Editor
