Rural communities’ resiliency: the parish of Cernache do Bonjardim, Portugal

Abstract

The theme addressed in this article is the resilience of a rural community, located in the interior of mainland Portugal. The objective was to portray the resilience of this community and to elaborate later analyses to perceive the positive and negative points presented. Currently, the resilience of a community is highly discussed, but no studies were found in Portugal that quantified or allowed to perceive the real resilience of a rural community. In order to achieve this objective, bibliographical research was done to help understand this issue, and surveys were developed based on the method used to delineate the issue. The main result was the confirmation of what was intuited in practice, which came to be confirmed lately: that the parish in study has an innate resilience, but that it runs the risk of disappearing due to the problem of desertification.