Report originally published on August 1, 2024. Republished on November 5, 2025, regarding the distinction with the Vicente Jorge Silva Journalism of Excellence Award.
NThat day, the two brothers went further away from home than usual. Two kilometers away, in Graça, they stopped at a place where the sidewalk had lost its stones and the earth made perfect holes for playing marbles. They were playing when a police officer called them. “Come with me to the police station!” Carlos and Jorge, aged 7 and 5, obeyed, out of fear. For an hour and a half they questioned us about what they were doing. And they had nothing important to say, except that they escaped from school in the morning to play, that they were motherless and that their dockworker father was waiting for them. The report did not convince the agent, who mistook them for orange thieves, poor children who were starving on Lisbon’s farms.