Florifeia (pre-municipal chronicle)

In the roundabout near my house, some “flowers” were “planted”. Yes, the use of quotation marks was deliberate, I didn’t just want to make it rain on the text, but the reality is that what is in the roundabout cannot be called a flower and, as such, it cannot be said to have been planted either.

The first time I saw them they gave me such a big laughing fit, that I had to go around the roundabout twice to take the exit that suited me.

I’ll end with the suspense right away because the higher your expectations, the greater the disappointment. Well, what they put in the roundabout is in the shape of a flower, but it is made of fabric and has a smiling face in the center. There are about ten of them and they are spaced out rigorously. They are plush flowers.

In the first weeks the “flowers” kept their colors and the wire that kept them stiff did its job. But the rains came, the seasons went by and today they are all saggy, dirty and dull. Unlike real flowers that rain feeds, in these make-believe flowers rain has a destructive effect. His face continues to smile despite the fact that, in most of them, it is covered by drooping petals. I can see in that action of covering the face a manifestation of shame, shame of a smile that endures without fading while the wire of the supposed foot gives of itself, leaving all the toy-flowers bent and surrounded by garbage.
As you may have noticed, I don’t live in Oeiras. The King of the Rotundas would never allow such an embarrassment. I live in Sintra, in Algueirão, an area with a lot of emigration and little money.

I never thought that a roundabout could cause me so much sadness, but the truth is that I can’t avoid this anguish that grows here in lost places between the stomach and the heart. Why don’t all people have the right to real flowers or just something beautiful?

This artificial beauty makes fun of those who look at it and not even it can maintain its artificiality: it gets tired of pretending and saddens, bends, grays, withers.
I wonder if there are more roundabouts in the country like this. I also wonder who came up with this brilliant idea and ordered such relics from Temu. Probably the same person who thought: “Leave it there, they don’t even know what is beautiful.”