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15 August 2013

In Portugal: Requiem for O Manel

Manuel Simões is being forced to close his 70-year-old family business, a restaurant on the outskirts of Lisbon. Since VAT rose for businesses like his, 75,000 jobs has disappeared from the industry.

By Joo Dias

Manuel Simões, 64, stands behind the steel and glass counter of his restaurant, O Manel, looking tired under the dim lights. “Everything has a beginning and an end,” he says, trying to hide how emotional he can get when talking about closing his 70-year-old business.

Simões has been serving meals and pouring drinks since the early 1970s, when he inherited this business from his father, who established it in the 1940s. Running the restaurant has never made Simões rich but it provided him with enough to keep the business profitable while employing four members of staff.

Located in Vale da Amoreira, a troubled, working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lisbon, O Manel is a place where you can enjoy the rare sight of an amiable conversation between African immigrants, gypsies and Portuguese. 
 
“Even those kids who are involved in all sorts of things – you know, drugs and what not – when they come here they never cause any trouble,” says Fatima Simões, Manuel’s wife and the restaurant’s cook. 
 
O Manel was founded back when Vale da Amoreira’s landscape was all pine trees and wild nature, not sevenstorey grey buildings enveloped in an aura of crime and poverty. Seven decades later, the restaurant is the only institution left that has seen it all.
 
But this month marks the end of O Manel. Although Portugal’s financial crisis is partly responsible, Simões was driven over the edge by the VAT rise from 13 to 23 per cent for restaurants and cafés – an austerity measure implemented in 2012 as part of Portugal’s bailout programme. This has slashed most businesses’ profit margins, at a time when eating out has become more of a luxury than a habit.
 
According to the association of Portuguese restaurants and hotels, since VAT for restaurants has risen, 75,000 jobs have disappeared in an industry that employs 300,000 people, 6 per cent of Portugal’s workforce. The association predicts that by the end of 2013 the number of jobless food-service workers will rise to 120,000. 
 
Simões reacted to the VAT hike in the way he thought most fair to his blue-collar, crisis-affected clientele: instead of raising his prices, he reduced them in order to keep the customers coming. 
 
His hope was proved wrong – or rather, insignificant, as Portugal’s economic crisis spread like wildfire, bringing the country to a record overall unemployment rate of 17.8 per cent. Although the customers stuck with O Manel, spending €6 (£5.20) for a meal gave way to paying just €1 (90p) for a beer. 
 
“When we shut the restaurant down, people won’t know what to do,” Simões told me when I met him. “We’ve always been here. We’ve seen so many people grow up. It’ll be like losing family.”

 

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