Stadium architecture in Portugal & Restaurant Vela 2 in Tavira.

Portuguese culture is mainly defined by three Fs. The F of Futebol (football) , the F of Fatima (the church) and the F of Fado (Amalia Rodriges). For the record, we will leave out the B of Bacalhao (stockfish).

The love for futebol is found in all parts of life and a discussion about it is seldom lacking, even at the tables around Olhão's market halls. And of course there is only one favourite club and that is Benfica. Benfica is the people's club, while Sporting is the club of the ‘fat necks’. A few years ago, when Sporting became champions, a national TV crew was out and about around the same market halls in Olhão trying to find a supporter and hear from his mouth the joy of the just acquired championship .

Despondent, after several attempts, the interviewer accosted my neighbour in the hope of finally finding a Sporting fan. But he too had to disappoint him. Full of pride, he told the camera that Olhão is a ‘working town’ of fishermen and that most people are Benfica fans.

Every town in Portugal has the requisite cafes or clubhouses affiliated with Benfica or Sporting. In Olhão, I regularly eat at Sporting's clubhouse, on the corner of an industrial estate, where you get a delicious dish of the day for a good price and where fortunately no one checks whether you are actually a fan.

 Sporting's clubhouse Clube de Portugal de Olhão

There is one thing very important for football and that is a stadium. In fact, in Olhão we have two. A municipal stadium and the Estádio José Arcanjo located on the outskirts of town between the municipal swimming pool and the illegal residential area of 16th Junho. There is often cheerful music from the sound system blaring across the city on Saturday afternoons, with a protracted ‘Goooooool’ from the stadium speaker from time to time when Sporting Clube Olhanense has scored yet again.

After the debacle with Dutch star coach Edgar Davids, Sporting Clube Olhanense was relegated a couple of years ago and is now clawing its way back up from the doldrums. Edwin, who was already shown a red card in his first match for comments made to the referee, only lasted six months in Olhão. he was enthusiastic about Pizza na Pedra restaurant on Avenida 5 de Outubro , where, during those winter months, I regularly found him chilling on the terrace.

Opening National Stadium (Estádio do Jamor) in 1944

On a national level, a major highlight was the opening in 1944 of the National Stadium (Estádio do Jamor) in Oeiras, a suburb of Lisbon. This showpiece of the then dictatorial regime was, under the leadership of Public Works Minister Eng. Duarte Pacheco, had come about after much effort. After a number of architects had dropped out or withdrawn, architect Miguel Jacobetty Rosa was given this commission.

In a 1941 Nazi propaganda exhibition called ‘Modern German Architecture’, the promoter of this event architect Albert Speer, had already shown what such a stadium should look like. The influence of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and the Zeplin Stand in Neuremberg, all by architect Speer, can be seen in architect Jacobetty Rosa's design. Coincidentally, he is also the architect of the first Pousada in the Algarve, namely the one in São Bras do Alportel,

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium

The National Stadium, located in the Jamor Valley, was festively inaugurated on 10 June 1944, with the President of the Republic Óscar Carmona and the head of the Oliveira Salazar government as special guests, of course. A large crowd was on hand to attend the parades and speeches but mostly because of the match between the rivals Sporting and Benfica.

After 80 years of faithful service, it is time for a refurbishment. Hence, a competition was recently launched for the rehabilitation of the stadium. As the prize winner, a consortium emerged with a design by the renowned architecture firm Aires Mateus led by Manuel, one of two brothers. They are no strangers to the profession and are counted among Portugal's top architects. With some 30 projects, they are present on ArchDaily's renowned architecture website, where several of their projects were even voted project of the year in both 2014 and 2020. Their projects can be found not only in Portugal, but also in Belgium (Architecture Faculty Tournai) and France (Olivier Debré Contemporary Art Center - Tours). Lisbon is home to their well-known EDP headquarters, and a little closer, a number of sensational residential houses in the Alentejo, such as Casa na Terra near Monsaraz.

Architect Manuel Aires Mateus' design for the National Stadium

According to architect Manuel Aires Mateus, the design, whose canopy of the entrance stand reminds me of a floating napkin with two points down, is just the beginning of a dialogue. An addition to the existing design is the construction of a canopy at a variable angle of inclination. Furthermore, the entrance to the stadium and the grandstand are to be modified and an underground car park is to be built. The capacity of 38 thousand visitors will be maintained, with the main objective of the new design being ‘modernisation’ and ‘improvement of safety areas, sanitary facilities and accessibility’.

Braga football stadium by architect Eduardo Souto de Moura

Already, Portugal has shown its extraordinary architectural qualities in the new football stadiums it built for the 2004 European Cup. One of the finest is the Braga stadium designed by Portuguese architect & Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura. At the presentation of the Pritzker Prize (Nobel Prize for Architecture) in New York, President Barack Obama spoke highly of Souto de Moura's use of materials and attention to detail, and he called Braga's stadium perhaps Eduardo's most famous work, taking particular care to position the stadium with very particular one open side, so that anyone who cannot afford a ticket can still watch the game from the surrounding hill. When, visiting Braga a few years ago, I asked a Braga fan and regular visitor to the stadium what he thought of the stadium's design, he said, ‘The architect could have made sure the stadium would have been closed. Now, when the cold wind blows from the neighbouring Monte Castro quarry in winter, you sit in the stands freezing in your winter coat.’

Estádio Algarve in Faro

In Faro in the Algarve stands a lonely and beautiful stadium (Estádio Algarve), by Australian architecture and engineering firm HOK S+V+E, the same firm that designed the Sydney Olympic Stadium in Australia and the new Luz Stadium in Portugal. The station's two main stands are covered separately by curved and longitudinally curved shell roofs suspended from a steel wire structure. This steel wire structure is supported by two angled masts assembled as a tensegrity, meaning a structure consisting of rods and cables, where the rods are meant to absorb the compressive forces and the cables for the tensile forces. A system devised by the famous architect/engineer Buckminster Fuller (Bucky) who also developed the geodesic domes.

The 1972 Munich Olympic Stadium

The 1972 Munich Olympic Stadium by Behnisch and Partners & Frei Otto is probably the best-known example of a stadium where this technique has been used. Yet another German example has been copied in Portugal. But history does not only repeat itself in this respect. Like more European Championship or Olympic stadiums, this magnificent stadium is empty more often than expected. FC Farense from Faro played there for a while and every now and then an international tournament is played there or the national team uses it sparingly.

Fortunately, Gibraltar's national football team is allowed to use the stadium for their home matches because there is no FIFA-compliant stadium on Gibraltar. So once again history repeats sight, as the Algarve smugglers were also good to save the inhabitants of Gibraltar in the past, such as during the naval blockade during the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783) by the Spanish led by officer Antonio Barceló. You can still admire the large houses in Olhão built from the profits of that ‘contrabanda’ trade at the time.

Restaurant & Benfica museum Vela 2 in Tavira

But the Algarve's ‘nicest’ stadium can be found in Tavira. Not built under architecture but built with fun and love for Benfica. Far outside the centre of Tavira towards Monte Aguda in a dead-end street you will find Vela 2, a restaurant and at the same time Benfica museum is. Upon entering, you run into a bar that is a mini version of Benfica's famous Stadion da Luz. The red rafters and the interior covered in red and white tiles are particularly striking. A formal language reminiscent of Madurodam, but in magnified version like the Portuguese miniature park ‘Portugal dos Pequenitos’ in Coimbra , where monumental Portugal is on the map in reduced scale.

Vela 2 serves only fish and owes its fame to that. Once you've ordered, they keep bringing out the skinned fish - with grilled squid as an appetiser - until you're really quite smitten. All this in an atmospheric setting with a profusion of red, TV screens and enlarged pictures of Stadion da Luz on the wall and ceiling, as Tibetan prayer vases, bowls and Benfica football shirts of all varieties. There is even a room named after Eusebio, the star player from Mozambique who brought Benfica world fame in the golden years.

In 2025, ‘Portugal dos Pequenitos’ will be expanded with contemporary architecture. The expansion project will include five new child-scale monuments, with representations of the Portuguese Pavilion by Siza Vieira, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego by Souto de Moura, Casa da Música by Rem Koolhaas, the Leixões Cruise Terminal by Luís Pedro Silva and the bar À Margem by Falcão de Campos.