Laying the ground work: How a tiny group of artisans keeps Portugal’s stone pavements intact
Maintaining Portugal’s traditional stone pavements requires skill, patience and a deep appreciation for heritage. We meet one of the country’s few remaining ‘calçeteiros’ paving the way.
In Alverca do Ribatejo, a sleepy suburb 20 minutes outside of Lisbon, Vítor Graça begins his working day at 08.00. Today the former fishmonger is fixing a patch of broken pavement outside his local cemetery. The 59-year-old is one of Portugal’s calçeteiros – the skilled workers responsible for constructing and maintaining calçadas, the traditional stone pavements that cover 290 of the country’s 308 municipalities.
It’s summer and sweat is dripping down Graça’s forehead. Immersed in his art, he hardly seems to notice. “This is more of a hobby than a job,” he tells Monocle. “The repetitive nature of it gives me time to think.”
Graça removes loose stones and fragments of broken limestone by hand, before raking away debris. (Lisbon’s pavements are made with limestone from nearby quarries in the Aire and Candeeiros mountains but cities further north use locally sourced granite.) He then pours powdered stone mixed with water into the gap that this reveals. Next, he takes out a hammer with a blunt face on one side and a long, curved end on the other. His work has a gentler soundtrack than the noisy business of concrete street maintenance: he taps the hammer against the limestone, then scrapes his spade against the rock dust. As he lays each stone, he smiles at the symmetry. Periodically, he rummages through his bag of stones to find the best fit. “This part is like my old job: selecting the best, juiciest fish,” he says.
After losing his job as a fishmonger during the 2008 financial crisis, Graça enrolled on a one-year course at Lisbon’s School of Calçeteiros 10 years ago. He is now contracted with the local parish but self-employed and paid by the hour. In the private sector, workers are under pressure to lay between 20 sq m and 40 sq m of pavement in the time that the calçeteiro might have laid just seven. “The quality of the job doesn’t matter,” says Graça. “They just want it done.”
Outside the cemetery, he has paved the words Passeio de Saudade (“Walkway of the Missing”). In front of a nearby florist, he stencils a heart in pink limestone. Sometimes, Graça leaves a “tag”, like a graffiti artist: a V nestled inside a circular G.
Today there are about a dozen calçeteiros registered with Lisbon’s council. In 1927 there were 400.
In part, the decline is because of the advancing age of those in the profession. The working conditions also make the job unappealing for younger people. “The pay is terrible too,” says Graça. Calçeteiros receive minimum wage – typically €920 a month. Many prospective workers drop out before they even qualify; of the 21 people on Graça’s course, only five completed it.
There are glimmers of hope for the future. A new Unesco campaign supported by the Portuguese government seeks to give calçadas Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Among other things, this would allow the country to apply for World Heritage Fund grants to improve working conditions for the calçeteiros. Graça hopes that the money will help to recruit new calçeteiros who love the work as much as he does. “People need to like what they do,” he says.
