Ginjal, From Rubble to Renewal: A Riverfront at a Crossroads

From the decks of the Cacilhas ferry, Lisbon glows across the river like a polished promise. But turn toward Almada and the landscape transforms—raw, weathered, and fiercely expressive. The Cais do Ginjal unfolds in peeling layers of graffiti and rust, a living scroll of the city's unofficial history. Its cracked warehouses and abandoned workshops form a gallery without walls, where street art speaks louder than urban plans and every stencil or tag whispers a resistance to erasure.

Here, the ghosts of industry coexist with murals of revolution. Afro-diasporic slogans, feminist poems, surreal figures, and cartoon saints cover the concrete, offering not just colour, but commentary. The graffiti is not decoration—it is declaration. It is what told you this place was still alive long after the formal economy had left.

For decades, Ginjal was held together by memory, improvisation, and an irrepressible urge to express. A place where fishermen, artists, migrants, squatters, dancers, and tourists all shared the same path—sometimes uneasily, often unknowingly, but together nonetheless.

Now, with bulldozers at the gate and eviction notices fluttering in the wind, Ginjal is at risk of becoming just another stage set for capital—scenic, sanitized, and selectively remembered.

A Dream Deferred, a Development Declared

The plan for Ginjal is not new. A Plano de Pormenor was proposed in 2008, approved in 2020, and has been waiting for lift-off ever since. Its scope is grand: a €300 million private investment.Back in 2017, Almada laid out a bold ambition: to transform Ginjal into a new urban front. The plans, designed by architect Samuel Torres de Carvalho and backed by the AFA Group, proposed a sleek mix of housing, hotel, restaurants, and cultural infrastructure. A kilometer-long promenade would open the riverfront to strolling locals and sightseers. Over 300 apartments, a converted cod liver oil factory turned boutique hotel, and new public squares were imagined as steps toward revitalization.

Now, eight years later, that vision is gaining ground. And yet, the question lingers: who is this new Ginjal for?

Between Realism and Romanticism

Let me be clear: I understand the financial scaffolding behind such projects. Cities need revenue. Investors need returns. Even idealism, to survive, must often rent a room in the house of capital. Land is not abstract—it’s taxed, insured, zoned, appraised. The pressure on local governments to unlock the “value” of underutilized land is immense. Real estate is not utopia. Cities need functioning infrastructure. Unsafe buildings must be addressed. 

Revenue-generating development is not inherently villainous. But neither is it inherently virtuous. To reduce a place like Ginjal to square meters and yield projections is to erase the interpersonal economy that has kept it alive through decades of abandonment. This isn’t romanticism—it’s recognition.

Ginjal was not a dead zone. It was a zone of possibility. Its ruins weren’t empty—they were inhabited by memory, by culture, by people who shaped their lives out of dust and driftwood.

But let us not confuse value with price. A city does not live by condos and cocktails alone. It survives through culture. Through friction and fusion. Through spaces that invite rather than exclude. I am not naïve: parts of Ginjal were unsafe. The previous use was often informal, improvised, or precarious. But instead of replacing that history with sleek uniformity, we must integrate it—with respect, memory, and imagination.

Not Another Alcântara

Across the Tejo, the Alcântara Docks offered a cautionary tale. Sold as urban revitalization, they became a sterile corridor of overpriced brunch and velvet ropes. Nightlife for the few. Nostalgia without nuance. If Ginjal goes the same way—walled in by “lifestyle” and “brand activations”—it will die a glossy death.

The ambition to “change Almada’s façade” must not result in erasing its soul.

What Could Be

Cais do Ginjal could be many things. A space for housing, yes—but with affordable options, artist residencies, and intergenerational models. A place for commerce—but also for non-commercial creativity: murals, performances, workshops, archives of memory. The vacant warehouses could be experimental studios. The promenade could host not only tourists, but local storytellers, capoeiristas, youth collectives, and elders playing cards under painted shade.

Let the new Ginjal earn income, but also earn trust. Let it host food trucks and food justice. Let it bring footfall and footnotes. Let it be a stage for the invisible. For those who are priced out, silenced, or exiled in their own city.

A Ginjal that reserves space for culture not as spectacle, but as practice. A Ginjal with Urban agriculture and maker labs. A Ginjal that understands that without culture, there is no city. Without access, there is no community. And without memory, there is no meaning.

Because a waterfront is more than a backdrop. It’s a borderland of the imaginary. If it belongs only to the privileged, it ceases to be public. And without culture—without room for surprise, dissent, and expression—there is no existence. Just consumption.

The Real Façade

The Ginjal has endured everything: fire, flood, fascism, neglect. And still, it glows—at golden hour, when the city opposite sparkles, and Lisbon looks like a postcard. But we must remember: postcards lie. They don’t show the bulldozers, the letters of eviction, the lives unaccounted for.

In that gap between rubble and renewal lies a chance. Not just to build differently—but to belong differently. If we let the Ginjal become just another luxury façade, we will not only have lost a piece of Almada. We will have lost a way of imagining the city as a shared project, not a segmented asset.

Almada’s true façade isn’t the one facing Lisbon. It’s the one facing its own future. Will we choose to build walls or bridges? Will we flatten character in the name of safety? Or can we design with empathy, with contradiction, with history?

Let the cranes rise. But let them lift people, too.