They are imperturbable, they are divided between appreciation and criticism and have a lot of fun with Miguel Furtado and, apparently, all those who send him photos on his Instagram account Old people in the yard. “I love gentlemen with their hands crossed behind their backs”, he confesses amused four years after opening the account that shows just this: men, almost all older, dangerously close to construction sites, who often give unwelcome advice to those who ask them to respect the safety distance.
“In Porto, I started to notice that they put windows for people to see the evolution of work,” laughs Miguel Furtado, 37, who didn’t need to work in construction to understand this social phenomenon. In the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, they are called “Umarell” and the word was added to the dictionary in 2021. Around here, without a more synthetic name, they can be the “engineers of the work done”. Miguel, a demolition fan, understands them. If I had more time, I might as well be one of them, he jokes. He thus limits himself to collecting them – and to promoting another trend: young people who photograph the elderly in their works.
