The set of images that we are going to publish in the next few days were captured around October 2008. It was the last summer before the urban intervention program called Polis. This area had seen a persistent increase in the influx of beach bathers in the last forty years from around the Lisbon area. This resulted in an often wild exploitation of the coastal area, where various support structures such as cafes, terraces and restaurants were operating illegally. When the summer came to an end, everything was closed until the next year.

Formerly a fishing village, these were successively assimilated by the more prosperous tourist activity. Although at the end of the day, spontaneous auctions still existed, they became more rare. The Polis program was the definitive turn towards the direction of the tourism as a strategic economic activity for the area. The photographs that we will publish in the coming days are the record of the end of the first phase of mass tourism in Costa da Caparica, coinciding with the end of the summer and the silence of the past and a future yet to come.