Matosinhos City Hall has already invested 1.4 million euros since 2015 for the Diaspora Museum
There is already space, the project is already designed by Souto Moura, but the idea has not yet left the paper. Municipality says that the museum will only move forward if there are community funds, a work that should be around "6/7 million euros".
Creating a space dedicated to the Portuguese language and Lusophone communities is the idea of the Matosinhos City Hall when thinking about the Diaspora Museum - Language and Migration Pier. An idea that emerged in 2015, but has not yet left the paper, as reported by Público.
Speaking to Porto Canal, the councilman of Culture says that, currently, "the work would cost around 6/7 million euros", despite being "very unpredictable". Fernando Rocha highlights that "at the time it was more 6, now it may be more 7". As for operational costs, the councilman says that will be necessary "300/400 thousand euros per year".
The building, the former Vasco da Gama cannery, was valued at 1.055 million euros and acquired by the Matosinhos City Council in 2016 through a land swap with the municipality. Fernando Rocha points out that "the building, in the area where it is, is worth a lot of money, worth a few million euros surely. So there is no loss of investment here, although the goal of the council is not speculation with the property that acquired in 2016. Fernando Rocha points out that the building "is certainly worth much more than double this value".
After the City Council, led at the time by Guilherme Pinto, had thought about this hypothesis, the creation of this Museum entered the agenda of priorities in 2016. The year in which the municipality bought the old Vasco da Gama cannery to serve as a home for this museum. After that a study was done for the unit and the project was even executed with the intention of opening this space in 2017.
"We did an architectural project, the specialties and a museology project. [...] This value is not lost, because the museology project is valid today, as it will be valid tomorrow, and the architecture project too, so no money has been wasted so far," says the councilman of Culture.
All this cost about 1.4 million euros. Money invested by the Matosinhos City Hall six years ago and still hasn't seen any work come to life.
The Câmara's justification is that the work won't go ahead if it doesn't count on the help of communitarian funds. "We are doing the process and we did it because we know that in terms of community funds, [...] everyone knows that the maturity of the processes is very important to be eligible," says the councilman.
What will the museum be?
The 'Language and Migrations Pier' wants to be a museum that shows Portuguese emigration to the world. Traveling to a time when aviation was not a solution for the Portuguese who sought better living conditions. In this sense, the trips were made by sea. The port of Leixões was one of the country's departure points, along with the port of Lisbon.
"In the emigration from Matosinhos to the world and with a very important language component. In fact, the museum has undergone an evolution and would not be called Diaspora, but 'Language and Migration Pier', because from here to the Diaspora many people have left at many times, in many historical eras and we must be aware that emigration usually was in search of what the country did not give to people, "says Fernando Rocha.
When it is already open, the councilman says that the goal is to "go to the places where these people emigrated to and see the presence they had, the influence they had on the language.
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