Oh! Quel farouche brute font dans le crépuscule – Les chênes qu”on abat pour le bûcher d”Hercule!, Hugo’s immortal verse, which serves as a portico and motto to When the Robles Abatem, by André Malraux, quickly comes to mind when we conjure up another fallen Robles, this Ricardo and bot, the “Xeca” of petit nom, who certainly will not be remembered for the thesis with which he presented himself in 2007 at Técnico for the master’s program: Prediction of the Behavior of Concrete with Recycled Aggregates. Overview of the international state of affairs.
Yet a certain lack of foresight about the behavior of the aggregated concrete, coupled with a huge dose of political naivety and shame no less, would have dictated the abrupt and ostentatious fall of Comet Robles, until then in a dazzling ascent in the bloquist firmament, henceforth tainted by an episode that could be classified, à faute de mieux, and in real estate parlance, as, say, a monumental marquee.
Until then, young Xeca, with a small black beard, small blue eyes, confident face, sly lip, did much good in the alternative public, not least because he combined technical and political skills with life skills that are very much in demand in today’s society. fashion and presents himself as a surfer, snowboarder and supporter of the SLB. Dubbed by Flash magazine! from “BES handsome” and “one of the sexiest municipal candidates in the country”, Ricardo Amaral Robles was born in Almada, on May 20, 1977, but was registered by Lisbon, and is the son of a military man, therefore he brought his childhood in Santa Maria dos Açores and later in Seixal. He went to demonstrations in the eighth grade and not long after he took part in the protests against the famous PGA. In 1995 he joined Técnico, became leader of the student association and fiercely fought against the practices. Meanwhile, he carried out practices of a different order, the liturgies of the extreme lateral left: youth camps, collaborations with SOS Racismo, municipal candidacy of the United Left, trips by bus to Genoa, for the heated struggle against the G8. He was also at the European Forum in Florence, in 2002, at the Social Forum in Porto Alegre, the following year, and for three months he would visit classical places of Guevarism: Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. In the days of the student fights, Capicua, his childhood friend, always remembered the Xeca shorts rain or shine, perhaps a sign of the eternal candor that would eventually victimize him in politics.
In 1999, Robles participated in the creation of Bloco de Esquerda and then did Erasmus in Copenhagen, specializing in urban regeneration and energy efficiency. Six years later, in 2005, he took over the leadership of the BE Lisbon Council, was elected a member of the City Council in 2013 and joined the Lisbon City Council in 2017 with responsibility for education and social rights. In the meantime, in 2014, together with her sister, who had emigrated to Belgium, she had bought a house from the social security, or rather a building, and a large house, where she carried out works and which she later put up for sale in a luxury estate agency. Purchase value: 347 thousand euros; sales value: 5.7 million.
It is not known whether he will have the fibers of a fighter, the soul of an always-on-foot, and whether that laroca cup will not, after all, hide a very cunning, smoking and never-extinguishing volcano, as happens with the immortals Santana and Isaltino, among other zombies of this Republic.
When it became known, it fell like a bomb. The young man was mercilessly killed before he even saw the masses and the profits estimated at 470% in just three years of investing. The criticism then focused on the profits made, but also, or mainly, on the gentrification and eviction procedure, and above all, especially on the more than obvious, scandalous and blatant contradiction between that practice and its hypocritical verb. The boy defended himself as best he could and could not, finding out, among other things, that the demand to resign was nothing more than a vicious attempt to “stupe public opinion”, an argument also used by the leaders of the Bloc, with the exception of the honorable decision of Luís Fazenda, who timely and informed immediately said that the speculative real estate incident went against the principles of the blockade and that the party must therefore “draw conclusions from it”.
Here’s the point, much more than buying and selling a beautiful building in a historic area (because, as another Ricardo, Nixon, said, “Making money is good”). In trying to hold Robles against everything and everyone, far beyond common sense and even good taste, the Bloc leadership ended up involving itself and its party in what it was and should be, a purely individual and private matter, subject. to a speedy recovery through a dismissal that would always have to happen sooner or later. As now, with the ill-fated Galamba, Catarina and the couple from Mortáguas, Costa chose the negative stop, the bain-marie, the dragnet, which left the boy languishing long days on the public road, dejected and bloodless. When he stepped down, he was already a corpse, a political and moral corpse.
As happens with all those who have sinned daily or mortally, engineer Ricardo Robles today walks the stony road of social reintegration, trying to reintegrate into the policy as best he can, or leave him on the path of a rehabilitation that, no if not longer real estate or housing, will it be mostly civil and moral, maybe even a little political, who knows? A year after the hecatombe, Diário de Notícias wrote that it had appeared discreetly in Teatro Thalia, where BE met on European election night, on May 26, 2019, and appeared shortly afterwards in tribute to João Semedo, in addition to remaining very active on the Facebook and Instagrã Networks (“Robles’ Discreet Year After the House Collapsed,” DN, 7/27/2019).
It is not known whether he will have the fibers of a fighter, the soul of an always-on-foot, and whether that laroca cup will not, after all, hide a very cunning, smoking and never-extinguishing volcano, as happens with the immortals Santana and Isaltino, among other zombies of this Republic. May you never lack hope, because if you don’t give the policy, you always have a place with RE/MAX.
Proof of Life (6) is part of a series of summer profiles.
historian. Write according to the old spelling.
Source: DN
