Letters from Portugal: Mobile Connections

Sometime before the Portuguese economic crisis could get compounded to the even greater mess it is now in; when Portugal was seeking financial aid from the European Union and a right-wing Finnish political party threatened to block this possibility, a highly entertaining and enlightening video made its appearance. This video, which premiered at the Estoril Conferences, soon made its way to the internet, where it continues to educate the world about the Portuguese, their achievements and their idiosyncracies. Did you know, for example, that the Portuguese have more mobile phones that inhabitants?

It took a while to make sense of this bit of information. How could this be possible? Unlike the irrepressible human, mobile phones don’t just jump off the shelf and procreate. How then to explain this multiplication? The first logical step was to recognize that unlike in the ‘old days’ when a mobile phone was expensive, today even younger persons have the option to gain a mobile phone. But acknowledging this possibility does not indicate how the number of mobile phones outstrips the inhabitants (not just the Portuguese nationals) in the country. The easy answer it turned out was that almost every Portuguese has at least two mobile phones. Some even have three.

The easy question having been answered, the next question was why would any person want more than one phone? What earthly reason could motivate a person to collect phones in this manner? Was there some unique social need that the mobile phone was enabling? For example, as a conversation with a social activist in Goa pointed out, the mobile phone does meet a variety of social needs in Goa. In circumstances where physical privacy is hard to procure, and where romantic intimacy outside of marriage exists but is socially unacceptable, the mobile phone manages to provide the space that is not otherwise unavailable. If such is the case in Goa then, is it possible that the mobile phone is being put to similar use in Portugal? Could it be that there is one phone for use with the family, and another phone, whose number is handed out to paramours and the like, the existence of whom is unknown to the family?

Sadly it turns out, such flights of fancy cannot be sustained, given that the answer was once more or less straight forward. It turns out that there are around three major mobile phone service providers in Portugal; Optimus, TMN, Vodafone (listed in alphabetical order). Each of these service providers, in a bid to gain a large a share of the market as possible, offer schemes where for a little extra cash, one can speak for an unlimited amount to phones within the same service network. It turns out therefore, that when one has a large social network, and one wishes to be in touch with them all the time and not crimp on the amount of time spent on the phone, having more than one phone and enrolling in these loyalty schemes allows one to talk as much as possible.

There are other questions that emerge from this revelation. These are questions about what this kind of arrangement indicates about the Portuguese economy as well as society. One of the features of Portuguese society is the tight relations that exist not just among family, but among friend circles as well. Could the owning of multiple cell phones be another strategy through which Portuguese society innovatively harnesses technology and the market to maintain these kinds of solidarity networks? These however, are questions for another day.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo 30 Oct 2011)

Letters from Portugal: Lisbon at the end of Europe

One of the joys of living in Lisbon at the current moment is getting the ring side view to watch the Europeans slug it out, as the continuing crisis causes the masks of decorum and dignity to slip off their collective faces. Take for example the manner in which the Danish government, forced by its right-wing partners, has decided to reinstitute customs control on its borders. The move does not apparently go against the spirit of the Schengen treaty that allows for passport free movement within the Schengen zone, but it does seem to militate against the spirit of the Treaty. In any case, there are also reports of a desire by France and Italy to see changes to the Schengen agreement itself.

A similar sort of discontent has been brewing in the past couple of weeks between Finland and Portugal. Portugal that held out until the last moment, is now desperate for a financial bailout from its partners in the EU. Finland however, thanks to the protests of the True Finns, another right-wing group, has threatened to not play ball by vetoing the parliamentary vote necessary for Finnish approval to the EU bailout.

For a country that may grind to a halt in June if funds do not flow into its coffers, to be put in a position where one is nakedly dependent on a third party for mercy, is fairly humiliating. The civil society response was not long in the coming, taking the form of a video. First screened at the Estoril Conferences, as a form of mild-mannered and tongue-in-cheek diplomacy, it then careened wildly onto the internet via You-Tube.

To be honest, the video, available on YouTube as ‘What the Finns need to know about Portugal’ is somewhat embarrassing. For despite the novel facts about Portugal that were peppered into the video (did you know there were more mobile phones than people in Portugal) it is awkward to say the least when one boasts about the size of one’s former colonial empire, or that the largest number of Portuguese speakers outside of Portugal live in Paris (leaving unsaid the fact that they immigrated thanks to a lack of opportunity in Portugal), or claims credit for things that one has had either no connection with, or the most tenuous of connections.

The interesting bit about the video for this post colonial Goan living in the former metropole was not the nationalist sentiment it could offend. On the contrary, this video was interesting because it was a direct statement to the Finns, ‘fellow Europeans’; hence all the stuff that a post colonial would find embarrassing or humiliating in fact revealed much about the European imagination. It told us something about how Europeans indicate to each other that theirs, is bigger (if you get my drift) than those of the others’.

A fortnight ago this column pointed out that in turning to Europe Portugal made a choice to be a junior partner in the European formation. The whole drama around the video validates that observation, indicating that indeed, what also informs the EU experiment is racial arrogance, one that is turned inwardly against the Southern (and Eastern) partners, as much as it is against the ‘Third World’. To be the junior partner then, is to be in a humiliating position, a position that one can get out of, by attempting a humiliation of others. But only just.

And yes, you absolutely MUST watch the video!

(A version of this blog was first published in the Herald dated 15 May 2011)