Tarrafal in "Expresso" newspaper

"If and when someone decides to call something 'Tarrafal' that is not the Tarrafal—the one of infamy, shame, and torture, made into a concentration camp for opponents of Salazar's regime—what is being invoked is a memory of horror to name a reality that, while completely distinct, evokes in the present similar feelings of terror to those from a distant past.

Tarrafal was in Porto. Inside it contained the 'valley of lepers.' Once again, a metaphor. It was a way of evoking those who, by frequenting that space, had already begun a one-way journey through the degradation inherent in extreme drug dependency. This all took place in a social housing neighborhood located in the parish of Campanhã. It had a name blessed by the veneration of a saint: São João de Deus was the official designation, even though, for a long time, and not just because it had become a sort of drug supermarket, it came to be known by its nickname: Tarrafal.

Pedro Neves, one of the most promising young Portuguese documentary filmmakers, could not resist this story of desolation and abandonment. The essence of the neighborhood today is merely a memory, etched in the anguish of hundreds of families expelled during the terms of Rui Rio as mayor of Porto." (by Valdemar Cruz).