Intro
The second FIC-FIGHTERS Citizen Event: “Voices for Change: exploring solutions for the Barreiro stack,” took place on the11 November 2025, where citizens and local stakeholders gathered at the Public Library of Barreiro (Portugal). This workshop created a space for dialogue about the legacy of the local phosphogypsum (PG) stack, often remembered as “Monte Branco” or the “White Hills” among the locals.
Through facilitated group work and creative foresight exercises, participants reflected on how Barreiro’s industrial past shaped everyday life, local identity, and the city’s image. Beyond mapping perceived risks and impacts, the event opened a conversation about governance, transparency, and what it would mean to return this riverfront space to the community — not as an abandoned liability, but as a place for nature, leisure, and renewed civic pride.
Context
Barreiro is part of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, on the left bank of the Tagus River. Its landscape combines strong natural assets — such as the Tagus estuary and the Mata da Machada forest — with the legacy of decades of heavy industry. Between 1950 and 1989, phosphoric acid production generated vast amounts of phosphogypsum, stored in open-air piles and lagoons across Barreiro and Moita.
Yet the workshop showed that for many residents, the PG stack is not necessarily experienced as an urgent threat. Instead, it has become part of a long-term coexistence — shaped by memory, resignation, and a sense that decisions happen elsewhere.
The Workshop
Organised by the FIC-FIGHTERS consortium, led by ALDA, supported by the local partner the Municipality of Barreiro and At Clave, the session gathered local residents, representatives from public services and industry.
The agenda followed the FIC-FIGHTERS participatory format:
- Identifying and Prioritizing Changes at the Local PG: exploring perceived changes related to the presence of the stack in the territory.
- Co-designing future scenarios for the stack: small groups wrote “newspapers articles” imagining Barreiro years ahead.
The methodology fostered open discussion, creativity, and collective reflection — shifting from lack of knowledge to possibility of change.
Insights from the discussion
Barreiro’s memory and identity is linked to the Industrial Hub once placed there. The workshop revealed a mixture of nostalgia of the bonanza era in terms of employment and development of the city, with the tints of emissions, the grey days and the polluted atmosphere. The industrial past still carries a dual meaning: pride connected to jobs and a strong social fabric, alongside memories of “grey days” where pollution was simply part of everyday life.
Knowledge about phosphogypsum itself remains limited and the stack is often framed less as an immediate daily concern and more as a long-standing condition — reinforced by uncertainty and a lack of clear, accessible information.
If there is one word that describes this community, it is ‘resilience’. After decades of exposure to pollution, including the PG stack, the dismantling of their source of livelihood, and the contamination left behind, the participants felt motivated. This sense of abandonment lead to regard with scepticism the possible recovery of the area.
Accessing information about the environmental liabilities, collaborative actions to address the situation, and transparent communication about remediation strategies were some of the top worries and issues to be addressed.
During the workshop, the shared vision of Barreiro’s future was shaped in transformation and rehabilitation of the area through the creation of a green and social space accessible to the public, emphasizing on leisure spaces.
What it means for the project
The Barreiro Citizen Event reinforces that FIC-FIGHTERS is not only dealing with a technical legacy, but with a social one: a community marked by strong belonging and memory, where the industrial past still carries pride — and where frustration grows around the way the closure and its environmental aftermath were managed.
Limited awareness about phosphogypsum is the result of people feeling that information has been inaccessible and that their contribution has not been valued in local decision-making. This makes transparency and open communication central—not optional—to any credible recovery pathway.
The workshop became a space where people felt heard, received technical information, and reconnected across generations around a shared ambition: a greener future a greener future, symbolized by the restoration of this space for the community.