There are abandoned buildings that are merely ruins.

And there are abandoned buildings that become mirrors of political hesitation, institutional paralysis, and collective forgetfulness.

Across the Azores, particularly in an era increasingly defined by housing shortages, demographic anxiety, rising construction costs, and the migration of younger generations, the question raised by veteran commentator Américo Natalino Viveiros touches one of the most important structural debates facing the Autonomous Region today: what should become of the immense public patrimony accumulated across decades of regional governance?

The argument is both practical and philosophical.

For years, successive regional governments have been urged to create a complete and transparent inventory of public assets owned by the Autonomous Region — land, buildings, industrial infrastructure, abandoned facilities, and unused state property that could potentially serve pressing public needs, particularly housing. According to figures previously presented by Regional Finance Secretary Duarte Freitas, the Azorean government currently possesses 4,659 properties, including 1,690 parcels of land and 2,399 buildings allocated to housing functions. Such numbers reveal not merely administrative data, but enormous latent territorial capacity.

And yet, throughout the archipelago, many strategically important public properties remain suspended in uncertainty.

Two of the most emblematic examples are the former Fábrica do Álcool da Lagoa and the long-abandoned SINAGA industrial complex in Ponta Delgada.

Both sites occupy powerful symbolic territory within the economic memory of São Miguel. Both carry industrial, social, and historical significance. And both, according to critics, remain trapped in bureaucratic limbo while the islands confront mounting social pressures surrounding housing affordability and territorial planning.

The deeper issue extends far beyond these individual sites.

The Azores increasingly face a housing crisis shaped by multiple converging realities:

  • rising land prices,
  • escalating construction costs,
  • labor shortages,
  • tourism pressure,
  • demographic concentration,
  • and limited purchasing power among younger families.

For many Azoreans, especially younger generations attempting to remain on the islands, access to dignified housing has become one of the defining social anxieties of contemporary autonomy.

That reality transforms public patrimony into something potentially strategic.

Viveiros argues that the Regional Government should not merely catalogue public assets, but actively deploy them through long-term housing policies capable of supporting families lacking financial capacity to enter the current market. His proposal recalls earlier cooperative housing initiatives developed successfully during the late 1980s — models that combined public participation, land access, and collective organization to expand homeownership opportunities during another difficult economic period.

The comparison matters historically.

The Azores have long depended upon hybrid solutions balancing public intervention with private initiative. Pure market logic has rarely functioned adequately within fragmented island economies characterized by geographic limitations, small-scale markets, and structural inequality between islands.

Housing in the Azores is therefore never merely an economic commodity. It is tied directly to demographic survival itself.

When young people cannot afford to remain in the islands, emigration resumes — not necessarily through the great Atlantic departures of earlier centuries, but through quieter forms of internal and external displacement toward mainland Portugal, Europe, or North America.

Every inaccessible house becomes, in some sense, a demographic decision.

That is why the demand for a comprehensive and transparent public property inventory carries such importance. The Regional Government has already announced work toward a digital patrimony portal intended to provide public access to information regarding regional assets and future management models. Such transparency represents an essential first step.

But inventory alone solves nothing.

The larger challenge is political imagination.

What should the Azores do with aging industrial complexes, unused public land, deteriorating facilities, and abandoned strategic spaces? Should they become housing? Cultural centers? Mixed-use developments? Innovation hubs? Museums? Cooperative neighborhoods? Social infrastructure? Public-private redevelopment zones?

The debate surrounding SINAGA reveals precisely this uncertainty.

Once one of the most symbolically important industrial enterprises in the archipelago, the former sugar refinery today stands as both monument and warning: a reminder of the industrial dreams that once animated the islands, and of how easily strategic spaces can decay while awaiting political decisions that never fully arrive.

Viveiros argues that any redevelopment project should preserve the industrial memory of the site itself, including the creation of a museum dedicated to its historical significance. That proposal reflects a broader Atlantic dilemma increasingly visible throughout Europe and North America: how can post-industrial societies redevelop abandoned spaces without erasing the memory of the labor, identity, and social worlds that once inhabited them?

The same question hovers over the former alcohol factory in Lagoa.

These are not empty terrains detached from social meaning. They are part of the emotional and economic archaeology of the Azores.

At the same time, the housing crisis introduces urgency into decisions that once could be postponed indefinitely.

Construction today increasingly operates through what Viveiros describes as a “two-speed system”: one reality for those with sufficient capital to build or purchase property, and another for families and young adults increasingly excluded from the market altogether.

In such a context, public intervention ceases to be merely ideological. It becomes structural necessity.

The Regional Government therefore faces a defining challenge for the next phase of autonomy:
whether public patrimony will remain passive inventory or become active territorial policy.

Because the future of the Azores will not be decided solely through tourism statistics, GDP figures, or political speeches about innovation and sustainability.

It will also be decided through more intimate questions:

  • whether young families can remain on the islands,
  • whether abandoned spaces can be transformed into living communities,
  • whether public assets can serve collective futures rather than administrative stagnation,
  • and whether autonomy itself still possesses the capacity to shape territory according to social need rather than market inertia alone.

For now, many of these historic structures continue waiting.

Waiting for plans.
Waiting for investment.
Waiting for political courage.
Waiting, as Viveiros writes, before rust itself becomes the final owner of spaces once central to the economic life of the islands.

And perhaps that is the deepest warning hidden within this debate.

When societies abandon their public patrimony, they risk abandoning part of their future as well.

Translated and adapted from an editorial by Natlaino Veiros, director of the Correio dos Açores newspaper.