Forest fires are a recurrent concern when the summer season starts. They have in fact increased both in number and virulence and this has been linked to global climate changes. According to the EFFIS (European Forest Fire Information System) data on fire seasons, the year 2022 is already the worst of the century: in less than seven months the burnt area already exceeds the overall area scorched by fire in 2012 which was up to now the worst year on record. The burnt area across the EU territory is now three times the average of the last 15 years. As of August 6 2022, Spain alone accounts for 40 percent (39.39%) of the total in the European Union in 2022, meaning 236,575 hectares out of 600,731 hectares overall.

Desolation and despair, city after city, village after village, from Irpin to Bucha, from Bashtanka to Mykolaiv, from Zalyssia to Kharkiv and so many other places. A country ravaged by a war it did not seek. A whole country is now left without a roof or food, no connections or communications. A country that watched young and old die unjustly. The outskirts of Kiev were occupied by the Russian army for about 40 days. Many horrors emerged after their retreat. The first images of the type of destruction that Russia was prepared to inflict were also arriving from Kharkiv. On February 24, the sun had not yet risen and Ukraine’s second largest city was already waking up to the sound of shelling. Shortly thereafter several villages were shelled while the Russians arrived from the East up to Mykolaiv’s outskirts.

Crossing the off-road trails deep into the bush takes us to a journey back in time. The many lived and silent testimonies of 13 years of Colonial War are everywhere if you know where to look. Barely known in Portugal, this is the other side of the colonial war, made of the personal predicaments of those who fought for the Independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Angola and Guinea-Bissau. With such struggles indelibly marked in their bodies, these are the men and women who, then coming of age, took up arms for the FNLA in the Dembos region of Angola and for the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau. These are the ones who speak with their voices or with their eyes. Silence belongs to spaces. From the now abandoned cemeteries where Portuguese soldiers were buried, to the places where shrapnel blasted countless lives of all colours, to the prisons of the Salazar colonial regime, to the silenced memories. A silence of death. Of many thousand deaths.

This report narrates the experience of migrants who arrived in the Canary Islands and ended up in Galicia after many months. Last year, around 23,000 people of African origin arrived in the Canary Islands. The Spanish government set up several temporary camps to accommodate these migrants that were arriving in different areas of the archipelago. Given the camps’ conditions, tensions increased in recent months including the migrants’ collective protests denouncing the suffering they were being subjected to. Overcrowded, exposed to the cold and lacking food, the site was abandoned in masse and people went on to live in the mountains of La Laguna. In this report, I followed the last months of their journey from the Canary Islands to Galicia.

We are the most educated generation in the history of southern European countries. And we were sold a future that does not exist here. We inherited the de-industrialization and ‘turistification’ policies. The EU-designed policies assigned southern Europe’s development to service-based economies geared to transform our countries in tourist resorts of the wealthy northern countries. The latter, on the other hand, kept their flourishing and robust industries and economies unscathed. As a result, job insecurity in the south has skyrocketed and the class gap has never been wider as gentrification lays bare. Many families lost their homes and young adults cannot even dream of ever having one. This a lost generation living in-between two crises of colossal proportions.

This is an intimate story about the ‘Jamaica’ neighbourhood in the outskirts of Lisbon. The community of around 700 people is an African majority of migrants and of African descent notably from Angola, São Tomé e Principe, and Guinea-Bissau. Residents have lived in extreme deprivation in unfinished buildings since the late 70’s. They lack the basics of public health: rain pours inside many of these damp-ridden houses. The 2020 lockdown heightened the poverty and the isolation felt in this community already segregated and stigmatised for so long. The hope they had since 2018, when a state-led relocation plan was announced, helped them to get through that period. Now the community doubts that such plan will materialise anytime soon.

The current energy crisis is way more than a metaphor of Lebanon’s predicament. Electricity supply is a daily challenge. Except for those who can afford a generator and fuel, the majority is struggling with very limited service and hours-long power cuts. In the past many got around this with domestic generators. However, the Lebanese pound dipped pushing fuel prices up. For many, these power cuts are a rerun of civil war hardships as if reopening some of its unhealed wounds. Seemingly worse in recent months and disrupting all aspects of daily life, the energy crisis in Lebanon has fueled social tensions and feelings of doom and gloom.

Data on the recent forest fires in Spain suggests that the year 2022 is one of the worst ever on record. The abandonment of the territory has led to the total decline of ecosystems that were once used and well-kept since ancient times. This emergency has only worsened with climate changes. Every summer is now a synonym for numerous forest fires, particularly in regions grappling with depopulation such as Galicia and Zamora. Forest fires devastate natural heritage, take lives, destroy homes, and trap our lives in the smoke. As the earth's temperature increases so too the virulence of such extreme events.

A document about the geography of one of the most peripheral areas of Lisbon’s greater region. We are at the last drop off of the train line between Lisbon’s city centre and Sintra town. The images capture that border-like territory where the man-made urban landscape and the natural landscape meet: where the city ends. The present essay is a selection of 10 black-and-white images edited from an original lot of 39 photographs.

Tânia Chaves, 27 years old, was diagnosed with bone cancer (osteosarcoma) when she was a teenager. Despite chemotherapy, the cancer had spread out to the muscles and, eventually, her left leg had to be amputated. In 2021, Tânia became three-time national champion of adaptive climbing. She was the first Portuguese participating in the world championship of this modality, reaching the 2nd place. 10 year-old Eduardo Dias was born with a physical disability (presumably, Poland syndrome) which caused a deformity in his hands. He started practicing adaptive climbing in October 2019 and by now he is already a national champion. Eduardo is regarded as a very promising young athlete. Tânia and Eduardo, both members of the Braga Climbing Club, are driven by their own resilience and the will to win.