S4 #2 | Protesting Evictions, Expats & the Golden Visa w/ Stop Despejos (Lisbon)

The End of Tourism

On this episode of the End of Tourism Podcast, I’m joined by Joana and Davide of Stop Despejos (Stop Evictions). Based in Lisbon (Portugal), Stop Despejos is an anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist, horizontal political collective, fighting for the right to housing and the right to the city. Through mutual aid, direct action, obstruction of evictions and media campaigns, they defend the right of inhabitants to keep living in their homes and neighborhoods against institutional racism, soaring rental prices, the commodification of housing, touristification and gentrification.

As an autonomous grassroots movement, Stop Despejos believes that a trulyinclusive city can only be achieved by collective organization and solidarity networks between its inhabitants.

Show Notes

The Question of Rent in Lisbon

The Arrival of Ryan Air and Airbnb in Portugal

The Golden Visa Scheme

The Backlash Against Foreigners

Can be Change Happen Through Political Parties or Only at the Grassroots?

How to Build Solidarity in a Community

How Can We Live More Meaningfully?

Homework

Stop Despejos Official Website

Stop Despejos YouTube

Stop Despejos Facebook

Aldrava Co-op

Housing Not Profit

Transcript

[00:00:00] Chris: Good morning, Joanna and Davide to the end of Tourism podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

[00:00:07] Davide: Thank you. Good morning, chris. Oh, good afternoon.

[00:00:10] Joana: Thank you for having, yes, good afternoon. Thank you for having us.

[00:00:14] Chris: My pleasure, my honor. Now, I'd like, since we're always doing this virtually, and since there's always time zones to deal with and that kind of thing, I'm hoping that you'd both be able to illustrate a little about where you find yourselves today and what the world looks like there a few days after these mass demonstrations that we'll discuss shortly.

[00:00:37] Joanne: Yes, well, I'm I'm in Alfama which is a really old neighborhood in the center of Lisbon. Actually Davide lives in the same neighborhood. And today, the weather is great. It's really sunny and you start to see a lot of tourists. You start to notice that you know, these amounts of tourists that we were used to see before the pandemic starts showing up again.

And honestly, I'm still recovering from the, the demonstration during the weekend because we were what, like three months working for this demonstration, probably around three, four months. So yeah, it was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it at the end for sure.

[00:01:27] Davide: I, I am in the same neighborhood in Alfama, and the sky is perfectly blue. It's classic Lisbon. It's a city that everybody loves.

[00:01:38] Chris: Thank you, David. Debbie Day. Thank you, Joanna. And so you both come to us today on behalf of an organization called Stop Despejos. Now, before we get into the gritty details of the demonstrations, I'm wondering if you two would be willing to share a bit about the history of the organization, why it was started, and perhaps when and by whom,

[00:02:07] Davide: Yeah, it, it's called Stop Despejos. It just means "stop eviction." It was founded in in 2017, about six years ago because at that time... In 2012, during Troika there was, after, after the financial crisis crisis in Portugal, I mean all over the world in Portugal the International Monetary Fund and the European Union understood that there was a great opportunity for real estate market in tourism in Portugal.

And so they convinced the government, the right-wing government to change the law about renting. And it was much, much simpler to evict people. Mm-hmm. It has become much simpler and one of the ways is actually not to renew contracts. Okay. So the contract normally lasts five years. So just five years after the new law, all people were evicted. And so including myself, and that's why we founded this organization. Wow. Joanna, do you have anything to add in that regard?

[00:03:18] Joana: Yes, I joined during 2018, so about an year after David joined. Actually, I also got evicted and it kind of started because of that, like I was in a really old place in the center.

And my landlord wanted to increase the rent for more than 300 euros. Wow. So that's the thing, like. There is no rent control happening in Portugal. If you are landlord and if your house is falling apart you can ask for whichever price you desire.

So, by that time I was doing some research, like thinking to myself, this cannot be legal. Like this is insane. And then I found out that it was indeed legal. And then I was doing another research to see if someone was fighting against this. So that's how I, I found out about Stop Despejos.

And by that time, my ex-boyfriend also had some issues with this landlord. So, yeah, that's how I got to Stop Despejos I'm there since 2018. It's also an autonomous collective. So we are not connected to any political party. We are self-sufficient. And we are anti-capitalist as well.

And we also work together with Habita, which is also a housing rights association that also fights, evictions, and provides legal advice to people that are on the risk of addiction. Mm-hmm.

[00:05:01] Chris: Yeah. And that name popped up as well, Habita, in some of the news press releases that came out regarding the demonstrations of this past weekend.

And so maybe we could start from there while it's still fresh in your minds with these recent actions that were organized by, Stop Despejo s. Nice. That came to pass this weekend and, and culminated in, in marches and protests on the 1st of April.

My first question is what did each of you see over the course of the protests and what has been the response in the aftermath?

[00:05:37] Joana: So this protest was organized not only by Stop Despejos and Habita was also by a lot of different collectives and associations, not only the housing rights collectives, also people that got in involved, dozens of different organizations that were preparing and working for this protest.We got around 20,000 people on the streets. I'm not good with numbers. David is the mathematician. But yes, around 20,000 people on the streets, which is massive for Portugal, to be honest.

There wasn't the housing rights protests in Lisbon. I think the last one was organized by Stop Despejos and Habita, which was during 2018, if I'm not mistaken. So yes, personally I wasn't expecting that much people on the streets, but it was really beautiful to see this amount of people organized and marching the streets and asking not only for better housing, but also the right to belong to the city.

You know, to have a city that it's not only made for tourists or for or for the rich or for private investors, but for a real inclusive city that is made for its people, for the people that works there, for the people that that lives there. So, that was really beautiful. It was beautiful to watch people shouting. It was really awesome.

[00:07:13] Chris: I imagine that being able to see, that amount of people, and not necessarily the number, that kind of abstract 20,000, but the number of people that you would've seen in the streets as well is a really deep way to measure the discontent and the crisis as opposed to just imagining that so many people or just like a few people share these sentiments, right.

[00:07:38] Joana: Yes, of course. And you would see everyone on the streets. Like, you would see people that living on the city center, but also people that live in the social neighborhoods, in the outskirts of the city as well.

Like all of them together demanding better housing and a better city and rent controls. So it was, it was amazing. When I woke up the next morning, I felt really grateful, even though there was some, there was some police violence at the end of the demonstration. Still, I woke up feeling really grateful for that day, for sure.

[00:08:14] Chris: Thank you. And David, how, what was your impression of the demonstrations?

[00:08:21] Davide: Yeah, it was, it was impressive. Let me say that Habita is a part of a European coalition called European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City. And together with Habita, we organized the outing Action Day every year.

But we could feel it, we could feel it because we have been organizing some preliminary meeting and they were full of people. I mean, you can feel this moment when the people wants to take some action and we could really feel it.

It was great.

[00:08:57] Chris: In fact

[00:08:59] Davide: our previous campaign was called " Retomar la Ciudad" (Take Back the City). Mm. And we really felt that for one day we took the city. Mm-hmm. It, it was great because. I mean, when you are walking in such a big demonstration and you look back and you see the street full of people and you know that you and your comrades are responsible somehow for that, it, it is really an amazing feeling. And now we will see where, what will happen. This depends on us, but also on, on the willingness of other people to, to join our

action.

[00:09:38] Chris: So doing, you know, the research that I could online when I started looking up the protests Lisbon, online in the English speaking world.

Anyways, there was clearly this kind of Associated Press press release that came out because every Anglophone media outlet that I could find that had put something out in this regard had the exact same wording. Yes. Right. And, and you, you can start to realize very quickly what's happening in that regard.

But one of the things that was written in the press release is this as follows. And it said that

"the figures released by Confi which collects data on housing shows that rents in Lisbon, which is a tourist hotspot, have jumped 65% since 2015, and sale prices have skyrocketed 137% during the same period.

According to another real estate data company, Casafari, rents increased 37% last year alone, more than current figures in Barcelona or Paris," which are two of the most overt touristed or visited cities in the world.

"Low wages in high rents have made Lisbon the world's third least viable city to live in, according to a study by insurance brokers, CIA Landlords."

And that's not a joke. CIA landlords.

Anyways, so I imagine reading this, I imagine that it hasn't always been like this. Right. And I'm wondering if you, could each tell our listeners a little bit about how this came to pass? I know you mentioned the change of the law, of the five year lease law and I guess how you've both seen the city change in the course of your time there.

[00:11:37] Davide: Yeah, I, I must say that apart from the new renting law, so what happened also in, I think 2013, it, that Ryan Air came to Lisbon together with Airbnb and this destroyer, I mean, completely ruin in the city. And before that Ryan Air was only flying to Porto. And then the new government was lobbied to allow Ryan Air. Then Airbnb was invented.

And Libo is a city where people I mean, there, there's not much job. So people really look into Airbnb as a way to make money. It is so easy. I mean, the only thing that we can sell is ourself, and they were very willing to sell ourselves. Mm-hmm. To, to make a decent salary.I mean, it was really perfect because it's full of people that wants to come to Lisbon because it's such a beautiful city, and we just have this to sell, the city itself.

And so all the neighborhoods, the central neighborhood of Lisbon were flooded with Airbnb. It's really incredible. And with Airbnb in town like that, without any regulation, without any regulation, I mean, everybody can rent how many houses or floods you want in whatever situation they are.

So the price is skyrocketed. You go from 1000 euro per square meter to buy a house. Now it's 5,000. Wow. I mean, people, maybe bought a flat for 100,000 euro. Now they sell it for 500,000 euros right there. Wow.

And now it's, it's even getting worse because, so when in 20 17, I was evicted. My rent passed from 500 euros per month to almost double. But now I, I know people renting a flat, a small flat, like for 1500 euros per month. And the salary is still the same. And then a lot of real estate investment. Really, I mean all, all the big players in the real estate in investment, they just came to town.

They started to build luxury condos. There are la luxury condos everywhere in town. Mm. Really? Everywhere. It's crazy. I mean, you see construction sites everywhere, but for room for nobody. Cause the, all these luxury condominiums are, are actually empty. They're just houses that are bought and then sold after a few years and things like that.

they're just made to store money essentially. Mm. So there are, there are a lot of economic factor, like one is tourism, and the other real estate speculation.

[00:14:30] Joana: And this is all also promoted by the state itself. It's not, yeah. It's not just a matter of, you know, it is the state also giving tax benefits to these private investors, also to digital nomads, you know, that come here and they can, they are the ones that can pay all these higher rents because the minimum wage in Portugal is around 740 euros.

And you can find, and there's basements that are 700 euros per month basement. I dunno nowadays exactly how much is a one bed one bedroom apartment in the center. But I would say it's around 1000 euros. You can easily find a one bedroom apartment for 1000 was per month.

Yeah.

[00:15:23] Chris: Speaking of tourism and Airbnb, we can't really speak about these themes anymore without speaking about there's other names we could use, but digital nomads. And this was another thing that was brought up in the English press releases is around this question in Europe that referred to as the "Golden Visa" And in the report it's written that "the current socialist government announced last month that a housing package among other measures, ended the controversial Golden Visa scheme and banned new licenses for Airbnb properties.

Critics, however, say it is not enough to lower prices in the short term." Now, given that, I imagine that you two make up some of these critics, I'm curious if you could explain a little bit for our listeners about what that Golden Visa program is or was and what it has done to the city and culture in Lisbon, if not the country as a whole.

[00:16:26] Joana: The Golden visa program is basically the state giving tax benefits to residents from outside of European Union. And all they need to do basically is to buy a property for at least half a million euros and also to create some jobs. But in practice they just need to buy a property.

So what happens is a lot of companies are also increasing the prices of houses because they know that someone will buy it for those prices. So that's one of the consequences of the Golden visa. And actually the government is not ending the golden Visa. It's just making some changes and changing the name because they're still giving tax benefits to someone that wants to invest in Portugal. So this is basically the so-called socialist government financing people and companies that are already rich.

So it's basically the state giving money to the rich. And these measures are not enough. I mean, this government is only socialist by the name. It's not socialist in practice because even those measures that aim to put Airbnbs back in the market, it's still the state giving tax benefits to those landlords, to those people that own Airbnb.

[00:17:55] Davide: Let maybe just a little bit more precise, you know Portugal belongs to the Shengen area. So if you have a Portuguese visa, you can travel everywhere in Europe. So, this Golden Visa program was a way for any outside the European Union to get a visa for the Shengen area by buying a property. And so it is really something terrible. Mm, I mean, to actually sell visas to rich people. It has to do a lot, not just with the fact of making the housing market crazy because of course the, the price is skyrocketed, but also it has to do with money laundering.

And it was really, really a bad thing for Portugal in general. And also this idea of digital nomads. It's somehow similar. It targets other kind of people, not the super rich from, I don't know, China or whatever, but it, it targets people working probably in some startup in California or places like that.

Just a way to make life easier in Portugal for rich people and more miserable for people in Portugal because the problem is that the economy is not very solid in Portugal. And so instead of investing money in building a better economy, they just trying to attract people that already have money, right?

It's becoming like economically very depending of money from abroad, from money, from tourist, money from people that actually work abroad. Just a nice place to live for people from outside and the people from inside. Well, too bad for them.

[00:19:48] Joanne: Yeah. The main issue is that the digital nomads usually come to live here earning salaries, wages from their home country. So they come to live here with salaries from the United States, for instance. So for them it's not, paying 800 euros per rent is really cheap. Which is not for us. So, that's the inequality here.

[00:20:11] Chris: Yeah. And, and that the place is more often than not, I mean, you could say almost always, but we'll say more often than not temporary in the eyes of the digital nomad, the tourist, perhaps even the people who purchase the golden visa because there's always this sense of, well, I could do this somewhere else, right? Because there's other places to be a digital nomad. There's other places to be a tourist. There's other places to get golden visas and on and on. And so I wanted to ask about the kind of, we'll say blowback or perhaps xenophobia that can arise from these things and does, and has. You know, it's something that I've seen here in Oaxaca over the last seven or eight years, especially in the last couple of years with inundation or flooding of this place with digital nomads, over tourism, Airbnb.

And it's been hard personally, but it's been easy visually to watch a kind of resentment and xenophobia grow against foreigners here as a result of this gentrification and culture loss. And so I'm curious if you two have seen anything similar in that regard in Lisboa or how has the general response been, and I think it's important to say here as well, that at least at the beginning when Airbnb tends to create this strangle hold in a tourist destination that a lot of the people who are, who are renting these flats or homes are locals. Right? And then certainly later on you see companies, corporations like Blackstone in Europe taking over.

These issues, we often try to make them simple to understand when in fact they're extremely complex and complicated. And so I guess I'm curious what you both have seen in regards to the loss or perceived loss of culture in Lisboa and the reactions from locals in regards to that against the foreigner, or perhaps against the systemic structures.

[00:22:21] Joana: Yeah, it's a really, it's a really interesting question. I would let David go first if you, if you have already something on your mind.

[00:22:29] Davide: Well, I don't think Portuguese people are very vocal in the xenophobia.

As a foreigner myself I never faced it. I mean, in general they're quite polite. Racism is always against black people, or the gypsy. I mean, there is some vague resentment, against tourists, but not too much. You, you don't feel it too much? I mean, I don't feel it, so...

[00:23:03] Joana: yes. Me neither.

I mean, you have people that feel really annoyed by tourists, especially people that lives in the center, obviously. They feel annoyed, but I wouldn't call it hatred, you know, in the same way that I would call hatred towards immigrants from Nepal or from India.

Those are the ones that I would say that get more hatred and also the gypsy community. And people from social neighborhoods. I mean, immigrants that live, in social neighborhoods. So I wouldn't say that there's a lot of hatred towards tourist themselves.

I would say only like annoyance, because there's also people that stand that really believes that without tourism we would have no economy. You know, they cannot imagine the end of tourism, let's put it this way. They aren't capable, you know, of imagining a new economy that wouldn't depend on tourism.

And you could see that during the pandemic. So I wouldn't really call, it hate, only annoyance. Let's put it that way. Yeah.

[00:24:19] Chris: And you had mentioned earlier that the current socialist government is socialist by name and not in practice. And I'm curious, how Stop Despejos sees the necessity of making change from the grassroots, or if there's a possibility of doing that on the electoral level.

[00:24:43] Joanne: It has to happen on the grassroot level. Yes. Yes. We do not trust that a political party will solve the issue because, this is an issue that has been increasing of it over the years.

And the state itself helps the increase of this issue. So we truly believe that in order for the change to happen, we need to be organized. People need to be organized. It's only through those grassroots movements that we feel that we are able to really create a radical change, a structural change.

This is beyond political parties. I think it's more about the people and those grassroots movement. That's why we do not associate ourselves to any political party, even though some of them try. But yes our work is based on social movements and with people.

We have tried to stop a lot of evictions that were not made by private landlords. They were made by the state. So, that's another reason. Me personally, I don't trust the state or political parties because the status itself is also able to evict and to destroy people, the right to adequate housing and the right to live in the city.

So that's why we need to work with people and to work with the grassroot movement.

[00:26:11] Davide: I would say that we are like more like let's say ecologists movement. We are really for system change and and not to change inside the system. But I must say that some people that used to belong to our organization, that really still very close to our organization, they founded a new movement for a referendum to ban Airbnb. Okay.

This would be like using the system, but without passing through parties really to use some direct democracy tool inside the system. And now possibly next year there will be this referendum to ban Airbnb. Wow. We don't know because such a local referendum was never used in the history of Lisbon.

So it is a tool that only exists in theory. In practice, we do not know. But still, this is something that may be the most anarchist in our group do not like, but in general, we are not against it. The use of this referendum tools.

[00:27:19] Joana: Yeah, I think that we are not saying that, you know, every politician is the same or that every party is the same, of course, that we recognize that, you know, some politicians may be better than others.

But at the same time it's what David was the saying. We want to make radical changes not outside of the system, not inside the system. Because even with good examples like the mayor of Barcelona, the system itself is so corrupt that it's really hard to make changes within the system.

It's not just one person with good intentions that is gonna change the system.

[00:27:59] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, at the end of the day, these issues that you've both spoken to are everyone's issues. They're not left issues, they're not right issues. They affect everyone. And you can kind of see through that and that the political spectrum in that regard is just incredibly divisive.

And so I wanted to ask you both a little bit about, your advice suggestions around solidarity.

Here in Oaxaca, it's a city that's been more and more touristed over the last we'll say 40 or 50 years. But really not on the tourist map until the last 10 years or so. And then at the end of the lockdowns became this kind of massive escape destination for a lot of Americans and Canadians and Europeans as well.

And so there's this sudden kind of, oh, this is too much. And we never imagined it could be this bad, but suddenly we're there and it's here and we don't know how to deal with it. And maybe because of the nature of the history and culture and politics in this part of the world, but there isn't necessarily this, this level of communication, network building, solidarity that there is, for example, in Southern Europe. And so my first question in that regard is, what kind of advice would you offer people working with social movements here and in other parts of the world who need to build solidarity among the, citizenry, but also between organizations who haven't done that before?

What advice would you have for them?

[00:29:52] Davide: Well, difficult question. Yeah, difficult question. I don't know if we are such a, a good model because our results haven't been that great. But

[00:30:02] Joana: it's a long process and I believe that we are still in that process, like in the middle of that process of building solidarity with different movements. I saw more solidarity perhaps during this organization of the protests of the demonstration. But I think it was a process that started already during the pandemic.

So it's a long and and hard process to build solidarity between movements because most of the time, I mean, we do not get paid to do this political activity. So, you know, people have their own jobs and their own lives. And sometimes it's really hard to do something as simple as planning an assembly with different organizations or collectives.

So I would say I mean, the best advice I could give is to be patient and to accept, really, that is going to be a process that sometimes you feel like you are all by yourself, that you are the only collective doing something. And other times you'll have a lot of people in your public assemblies.

So, it's a long process and my best advice would be that, and also to respect the differences between several collectives and organizations and between people. What's the main goal?

What's glue sticking all of it together. What are your enemies? Basically, what are the enemies that you are fighting? What type of city or what type of country would you like to live in? So, use your imagination and use it as a fuel also to create goals and to plan.

[00:31:45] Davide: One thing is, is to be well organized as much as possible. And being organized for us, it's like we are a perfectly horizontal organization. We don't have any leader, but like something simple. Every time we meet, I mean every week we have one moderator, one taking notes.

And then another thing which is important, it's kind of a blend between action and study. It is important to study, I mean, to, to grow

one's understanding but also it is important to actually act. You need to actually meet people that are in this situation you are fighting against. You need both, both action and, and study. And then one other thing is never get overwhelmed because when you start working, doing activity with people that are being evicted or losing their homes, these are let's say emotionally very heavy situation.

And more often than not, these people are actually losing their home. You cannot do too much. And so it is important that you don't feel guilty for that. You don't spend all your life try to save others people life. Because if you do that for six months, then you quit the struggles. So it's better to keep like a lower profile, but to be consistent during the years.

[00:33:19] Chris: Well thank you both for that. And then the other side of the question or the coin of the question. So, the first one was regarding social movements and then this next one is speaking to individuals. There's been this for me anyways, this clear view towards tourism as a kind of escapism that masquerades as freedom of choice, especially for those of us in the Americas, right?

So the pandemic deepened that, to say the least. And as a result of people getting to choose where they live, the places they choose generally suffer as a result, you know, regardless of people's good intentions or even good behavior. And so sometimes it's hard to resist the urge to blame the foreigner and to focus on them instead of the system and the structures of oppression that it produces.

But at the same time, we need the foreigner, in the context of digital nomadism and tourism and the golden visa, we need each of them, each of those people, to understand their consequence in the world. And so finally, I'd like to ask you both, what advice would you have for the tourists and expats who want to experience Portugal or who already live there, who perhaps want to act and proceed as responsible residents, for those who would want to visit.

[00:34:53] Davide: Tourist must know that if he comes to Lisbon or she comes to

Lisbon. She will spend most time standing at other tourist like him. Just like an ecosystem just made of tourist, of tourist. If tourist here live actually in a strange ecosystem made of, just, of tourist then I think it's kind of not very nice experience.

So to be more, more precise,half of the time a tourist will look at his smartphone and half of the time at other tourists like him. I think this, this way of leaving or traveling, it is very superficial. You don't get anything to come to Lisbon or to any other place in the world just to spend time look at on a smartphone or looking at other tourists like you.

But this is like more moral statement. I mean, people should look inside themselves to start doing things which are more meaningful instead of just doing things that they happen to do because everybody does the same thing.

[00:36:01] Joana: Yeah. It's a difficult question. I agree with, with David. I also worked on the tourist industry years ago. And I remember I got the feeling that the tourists in Lisbon kind of felt deceived. They would ask me all the time, where are the locals? Where can I find locals? You know, I only see tourists around me. Like, can you recommend me a place where, where the locals go and so on.

So yeah, I would say the tourism basically is not worth it. You know, it's not worth going to Lisbon spending holidays. It's not just a matter of personal responsibility because I understand that people work and they feel the need to spend the holidays on some cheap destination and Lisbon is really cheap for a lot of tourists.

It's more about systemic change, but at the same time, I believe that we still need to have some sort of personal responsibility. So I would say just go somewhere else where it's not too touristified, just try to choose another destination that is not totally exploited by the mass tourism to the golden and You know, and the digital knows honestly, I don't know how, how they could be more responsible because they are taking advantage of a situation, where that situation is only possible because the locals are getting affected by it. Maybe try to get involved in your local social movements. Get involved, try to know the neighbors and to do something. Use your privilege in order to change something. But be aware that you are only here because you are privileged enough to benefit from our government. Mm-hmm.

[00:37:56] Chris: I think that's really important as well, this notion of, if you're gonna go and live in a place, understand the history, understand the culture, understand where you are, when you are, and get involved, right.

Get involved with the social movements and the grassroots of the place. And so, you know, for our listeners or maybe people either visiting Portugal or living there as well, how might they find out more about Stop

[00:38:24] Joanne: They can find us on social media.

We have a Facebook page, also an Instagram page, and all of our assemblies are open to the public. Everybody can go there. Usually our meetings are on an association called City Guide. In the center, in one of the most gentrified areas of the city center.

So it's cool that we have our meetings there. And it's every Mondays at 7:30 PM. Usually we start late cause we're in Portugal. But everybody's welcome. Everybody's is more than welcome. You don't need to to be like a researcher or academic or to even suffer or to have suffered some kind of eviction.

Everybody's welcome to our assemblies and to join.

[00:39:15] Davide: I would like to say that it's really beautiful to be part of like a movement and a collective, like Stop Despejos. So, when after I joined, I was facing a difficult time in my life. And, and for me it was very important to, to be there. I mean, first of all, to see that there are people with bigger problem than mine.

And then it's, for me, it's really a pose from my personal life. I go there and also must say that the people that are involved in this kind of struggle are in general pretty special people. So you meet people you would wouldn't normally meet at work or, or in a pub.

It's really enriching things to do.

[00:40:03] Chris: Fantastic. Well, I, I'll make sure all of those links for social media and the website are up on the end of tourism website when the episode launches. And from what I understand, there will be some extra media to share.

Well, it's been a, a great pleasure to meet and speak with both of you, at least virtually, and maybe one day in person.

You'll be welcome. You'll be welcome than welcome, Chris. Yes, likewise.

[00:40:30] Davide: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:40:31] Joana: Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for having us.

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