EL PAÍS

The Portuguese builder and patron of the arts, who worked cutting stone as a child, has opened MUZEU in Braga, a centre for reflecting on and trying to transform the world.

In the Palmeira industrial park, on the outskirts of the Portuguese city of Braga, workers and managers devote one hour of their working day to reading and receive free classes in philosophy, painting or theatre. Culture is an integral part of the working day across these 80 hectares of factories, offices and heavy machinery, headquarters of construction giant DST, with around 50 companies and 4,000 employees. Workers carry out their tasks surrounded by 40,000 books, works of art wherever they look and literary quotations that catch their attention from large letters on walls.

Palmeira embodies the dream of José Teixeira (Braga, 1960), a rich man who was born poor and who, as he tells it, was saved by culture as a child. He owns only one house and one car, people in his circle say, and much of the fortune he accumulated with his construction group was invested in an art collection containing 1,500 works.

In April, Teixeira opened Muzeu, a centre for thought and contemporary art, the first in his home city, with 212,000 inhabitants. It presents a selection of around one hundred works by artists such as Alex Katz, Artur Lescher, Candida Höfer, Ansel Kiefer, Isabel Muñoz, José Pedro Croft, Nan Goldin, Pedro Cabrita Reis and Picasso, but it is not intended to be merely a repository of paintings, photographs and sculptures. 'I don't want a neutral museum; Muzeu wants to provoke,' warns its founder, who allocated €40 million to the project. The idea of naming it a centre for thought came from its director, Helena Mendes Pereira. 'It is a museum to intervene in the polis, to educate, to mobilise,' she explains. 'I have worked with many collections, I know the market and I can say that Teixeira is a distinctive personality. In addition to being a patron, collector and owner of the ZET gallery, with premises in Braga and Lisbon, he has countless projects that he invents himself. What motivates him is changing things, and he understood that the power money gives you is to do what you want.'

That is why, Mendes points out, Muzeu invests heavily in a diverse and constantly evolving programme, which even includes philosophy sessions for children. 'Learning to ask questions is essential,' argues the DST president.

Last week, the installation 'Handle with Care' by Lebanon-born Canadian-based artist Elias Nafaa was inaugurated at Muzeu, and EL PAÍS was invited to visit along with other media outlets. The work reproduces the different types of bombs used by Israel in its repeated attacks on Lebanon since 2023. To create it, the artist delved into war archives. 'Like many people in exile, I live in a constant void: physical distance does not protect me from the emotional weight, nor from the feeling of helplessness,' says Nafaa.

Teixeira's utopia emerged in a quarry in the 1960s, with Portugal plunged into the economic and cultural poverty of dictatorship. At just seven years old, he worked breaking stone. There was not even a book at home, he recalls. His first reading came thanks to a charity foundation that distributed copies in the street. Those pages opened a door of escape for young Teixeira. 'The poor boy became the hero he chose in the book he was reading,' he recalls.

The liberation and comfort that reading gave young Teixeira grew when he began doing theatre with the scouts, as the years passed and his family left poverty behind, building the construction company he now runs. 'I realised that art is fundamental, that it was very good for me. And I thought that, if it worked for me, it had to work with others,' he explains. That biography is now present in the Palmeira industrial park, where artist José Pedro Croft has created a memorial against the child labour Teixeira himself experienced.

'Proximity to culture is productive'

Among the factories, an art installation equipped with a megaphone broadcasts emancipatory speeches in Nelson Mandela's voice. DST headquarters is an open-air museum, with more works by women than men. It has a sound and photography studio and workshops to host resident artists who will soon live in homes still under construction, designed by Norman Foster.

From time to time, the industrial park welcomes creators looking for industrial waste to transform into works of art. The women's changing rooms recreate the dressing rooms of a theatre.

DST argues that 'proximity to culture is productive' and that it is possible to 'work with high standards and grow as a person' while still fulfilling working hours.

'I make a lot of money because I have the workers on my side,' says its president, shrugging when asked why his fellow entrepreneurs do not replicate his model. 'Companies have duties to the community beyond paying taxes; they have a social, moral and ethical contract,' he argues. He says he is not afraid of critical subordinates challenging him, nor that his advocacy of labour rights will irritate fellow businesspeople or politicians who award contracts.

Just a few days ago, a company party was held at DST.

One of the workers approached Teixeira to tell him something. He confessed that he had been in prison and had attended one of Teixeira's conferences there. Listening to him, the now-employee assured Teixeira, had 'changed his life'. The builder recounts how much this impressed him, stroking the hairs standing up on his arms. 'Beautiful things work better,' he proclaims.