THE MOODS OF THE ATLANTIC
We grew up together. In May 1966, just days before I was born, the Praia Grande Swimming Pool was inaugurated by President Américo Tomaz. At 100 meters long, it was considered the largest open-air saltwater swimming pool in Europe. Occupying a substantial stretch between Praia Grande and Praia Pequena, it has resisted ever since the fury of the waves that often leap over its walls and pour inside.
It was 1980. Few winters went by without the sea invading the pool, causing enormous damage. Then, on a fateful December night, buoys off the coast of Sines—placed only a few months prior—recorded waves reaching 17 meters in height. The Praia Grande Pool was heavily damaged.
But the storm wasn’t only coming from the ocean. There were serious concerns about the viability of the business, which was accumulating losses that eventually led to its bankruptcy. After the revolution of April 25, and several years of self-management, with the constant threat of layoffs looming over the workers, there was fear that this storm might deliver the final blow.
That year, the pool’s bottom gave way. In the area most exposed to the surf, part of the wall collapsed and the sea began, first, to peer inside, then to enter, and soon after, to stroll freely within. It seemed a ruin was being announced, a white elephant—or, as we’ll see next, something of a sperm whale.
FROM THE BEACHED WHALTE TO THE STATE OF THINGS
In the early 1980s, filmmaker Wim Wenders chose the pool and its hotel as a setting and shot a significant portion of his film The State of Things there.
In an interview he gave in July 2017 to Pedro Dias de Almeida for Visão magazine, Wenders said he had been “left with several strong impressions from that trip to Portugal in 1980. On the one hand, Sintra, where we filmed various scenes and stayed during the shoot. (…) And then there was the vast Praia Grande with that abandoned hotel, lying there like a stranded whale. In fact, finding that abandoned hotel was what triggered the whole film.”
Little did the director know that on the neighboring beach, not long before, a 16-meter sperm whale had actually run aground. It couldn’t be removed from the rocks and so, lacking a better solution, had to be burned. But let’s leave the dying cetaceans behind, whether made of flesh or concrete.
Until not too long ago, I used to frequent the café and terrace at the Praia Grande Pool. I remember Wim Wenders, not yet a known name, and his crew settling in there for a time.
THE AIRPLANE AND FICTION
And I also remember the airplane—like a totem hanging by the sea—that appears in the film. It was nose-down in the ground at the north end of the pool, which stirred our curiosity and amazement.
I was 14 at the time, and it was around then that I began taking photos. A friend of mine who worked at a photo shop would bring different cameras on weekends—ones that had just been repaired—claiming they needed testing before the clients came to pick them up. He’d also bring film rolls, which he developed later. The following week, he’d return with the printed photos and a new camera.
For someone starting out in photography, it couldn’t have been better.
The photos of the airplane and the pool are probably among the first I took on 35mm film. But was it me who took them—or my friend who brought the cameras and the rolls? I honestly don’t know. And neither does he. “They’re ours,” he assures me.
This might have been, after all, my first fiction—sparked by Wenders’ grounded airplane at Praia Grande. But what came from that moment is that I never stopped taking photos.
Wim Wenders returned some years later to film in Lisbon, as is well known.
At that time, the pool also appeared in some shots of a U2 video—Vertigo—which was mostly filmed on the south bank of the Tagus and at Praia das Maçãs.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The ruins are now, thankfully, a memory of a distant past, and the Praia Grande Pool continues to resist the power of the sea, in enviable shape and approaching its sixtieth anniversary.
And the sea I see from there continued throughout my life—until quite recently—to inspire readings, reflections, and conversations tinged with the scent and taste of sea spray. In a silence broken only by the sound of the waves crashing.
But that has ended. The background music now playing outside made me realize that what always set that place apart for me—the sea, in its fullness—no longer makes sense in that same space I’ve known since birth.
These are signs of the times. Music has become banal everywhere. It has turned into background noise no one really listens to—whether in public transport, shopping centers, or from mobile phones imposing one’s taste and choice on others, without care for whether they’re invading someone’s space or causing discomfort. In places we cannot avoid, there’s no longer any choice but to wear headphones or earplugs to preserve our privacy. Elsewhere, it’s a matter of preference.
As Sérgio, an older teenage friend I hung out with here in the 1970s used to say:
— “Without silence, there is no noise.”
I return to Wim Wenders and the title of the film shot there: The State of Things. We’ve aged and endured together. But unlike me, modernity seems to have arrived at the Praia Grande Pool terrace. When we both turn 60, I won’t forget to congratulate it.