Cubes on the Road to Sines

Provide Fodder for Speculation

On the edge of Sines, a former coal-fired electricity plant of EDP awaits another use.

The giant cubes with chimneys emerging from them were clearly industrial buildings of some sort. But I had taken to calling them sculptural art of the modernist style, so symmetrical were they, and unblemished.

Spurring my imagination on was that I was having no luck finding out their purpose. Being the inquisitive sort, I would look at the sign on the access road as we whizzed by, but be unable to interpret its meaning. Google Maps only showed the outlines of the buildings’ footprints. Could they be a secret military base?

The problem was, we were always driving by them on the way to somewhere else, usually with family. It was impractical to stop.

The big cubes lie on the edge of Sines, which is the biggest city near us, about a 40 minute drive from where we are in Odemira county. Sines is the biggest container port in the country, and sits about 90 minutes south of Lisbon. The big cubes sit right outside the city, within sight of the sea. We see them as we approach from the south and east. What were they?

This week, I found out. The opportunity came when for once I was driving back from Sines alone. We were picking up a second rental car in that city, which we needed for two weeks for reasons I won’t go into, and so we both drove together to Sines and then I drove the second rental car home myself. And I quickly realized I had my chance to look at the factory.

I first drove around it on some sort of circular access road. The complex was bigger than I thought, and I could see more buildings including some with conveyor belts going to them. Then I drove up to the front gate. I pulled the car to the side of the road, and walked up to the guard house. A pleasant woman with black hair came up and we spoke in Portuguese. I said I wanted to go inside. She called someone on the phone, and she handed the cell phone to me. I spoke to him in Portuguese. He said you’ll have to talk to Lisbon to get access.

So stymied, I asked her what the building was used for.

Only then did she deliver what to me was the headline news: the buildings and factory were empty, save for a few office workers. She said the building had been a factory converting coal into electricity. It was still owned by Energias de Portugal, or EDP, Portugal’s national energy company whose electricity bills I receive. In research for this article, I learned a Chinese energy company, the Qatar Investment Authority and the American investment firm Blackrock now partially own it. The factory’s decommissioning would explain the absence of smoke coming from its chimneys, and lack of workers going in and out. In imagining it as modern art, I must have picked up on the buildings’ inertness.

The coal-using factory must have been decommissioned to as part of a transition to non CO2 producing modes, such as wind power, of which Portugal has much. We pass by these giant pinwheels all the time. I like their white forms and spinning blades next to the rolling fields and cows and goats. They are also modernist sculptures. I just read that EDP is the world’s fourth-largest wind-power producer.

So my giant modernist cubes play no other purpose at the moment other than to be looked at. The security guard said that EDP is still figuring out what to do with the factory. Maybe I will call Lisbon and see if I can get a tour and an idea of what plans are. In Germany, some old power plants have been turned into post-industrial parks. I am not sure that is the best idea for these, but I would like something to be done with them.

Stay tuned.

What We Are Watching: Alone, and the Regular Show

For reasons of the heart, having our son Max back with us for a while after completing his first year at university is gratifying.

But besides that, we are also pleased on a more routine level because he tells us, when asked, of shows to watch on television. That’s a gift, because the production of moving pictures accompanied by sound and words, to be delivered via apps or antennas or cable services, and watched on a rectangle in your living room, or tablet or phone in your hand, or screen in a theater, has become so voluminous that it is impossible to keep up with what is available, much less watch them all. And having suggestions from our son is doubly valuable because he is young, and so draws from a different universe than ours, which is far, far away from his.

One show we have now watched one and a half seasons of, together, is Alone, a show now in its 11th season. The History Channel produces it, even though if you ask me it doesn’t have anything to do with history. And available some of the time on Netflix, Amazin Prime and probably a lot of other places. I would put a link but I just failed to find one just now that seemed right.

The premise is ten people are dropped, alone, in some barely habitable terrain, and then the viewer watches as one by one they “tap out,” for reasons of injury, illness, hunger and more. The winner is the last one standing. The contestants are all trained survivalists, so the winner ends up surviving for two or three months just on what they can forage and hunt, sans guns.

As with all these competition shows, like that English baking show to name a very different kind of contest, they are oddly addictive.

I have wondered about the morality of this show. The challenges and risks, as viewed through the cameras the participants have to use, are very real. I think it’s only a matter of time until someone dies. The bears, wolves, cliffs and frigid waters are not simulations. And help is some distance and time away by boat or helicopter.

But I will leave such concerns aside as we continue to watch.

Another show he recommended was the Regular Show, an 11 minute cartoon about a racoon and a bird that starts normal and gets surreal and outlandish. I like it because the humor is different, and it’s short. We watched it on Netflix.

Tummy Time: Fish Stew

Pile onions, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes some fresh herbs into a pot, put some fresh fish on top, add just a little water, put it on the stove top for a half hour or so, and you have a Caldeirada de Peixe, a sort of Portuguese fish stew or soup. I made one the the other day for the first time, and it came out really well. Both K and EC, our small one, liked it.

The fish in the picture below on top are pata roxa, a tiny breed of shark called dogfish in English; sargo or seabream; and pompo, or pompano. EC liked the dogfish best, while K liked the pompano.

Caldeirada de Peixe, or Fish Stew. I made it myself!

P.S. My copy editor is unavailable thinnweek so I apologize in advance for any errors of spelling, grammer, word omissions or other errors in the text. I’ve learned over the years I am a terrible copy editor.