Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

About 60,000 persons, or one per cent. of the entire population, are engaged in fishing or in selling or preparing fish. Sardines are very plentiful, and donkeys laden with them are driven far inland. The number of Portuguese who go to the north seas to fish for bacalhau has greatly increased in recent years, and in 1911 amounted to 1,400, in forty-five boats of an average size of 280 tons, whereas in 1902 there were but fifteen boats with an average size of 180 tons.

Portuguese Manufactures.

The number of workmen employed in the cutting and preparation of cork may be 5,000, but, even if these be included, the total industrial population of Portugal will scarcely exceed three per cent. of the whole population. The largest number are employed in cotton and woollen factories of the north (Covilhã Guimarães, Portalegre, etc.), the former with some 30,000, the latter with some 10,000 workmen. A far smaller number are engaged in factories of paper, glass, glazed tiles (azulejos), silk, etc.[19] Portuguese industries, although they are bolstered up by an excessive protection, are not congenial to the climate or the character of the people, and but for protection many of them could not exist for a month, while under protection they tend to vegetate and to raise the prices rather than the quality of their products. It is sometimes complained that the Methuen treaty killed Portuguese cottons and woollens, but as a matter of fact an even more exaggerated protection could not enable them to compete with foreign goods. They are exported chiefly to the Portuguese colonies; the woollen goods supplied in Portugal are mostly of a very rough sort, such as peasants’ caps and cloaks, excellent of their kind. The Portuguese have always shown a preference for English stuffs.[20] In the same way the paper produced is of the commonest; perhaps the only manufacture in which they excel is that of the glazed tiles, with which so many houses are lined within and without.

Agriculture.

The main business of the Portuguese is not industry, not even politics, but agriculture,[21] the number of persons engaged in agriculture being calculated at about three-fifths of the whole population. Agriculture often, too often, means vineyards. The soil and sun of Portugal combine to make it a land of the grape; and along the sea vines can grow where other crops cannot, dying down to escape the winter storms, then receiving the spring rains till the grapes begin to swell and sweeten in the summer months of drought.

Wines.

Nearly every other village seems to be celebrated for its wines—common wines prepared without care, and selling for twopence or threepence the litre bottle. The yearly average of production is about a hundred litres to every inhabitant in Portugal. The wines chiefly exported are of course port wine and Madeira.[22] The wines of Collares, Bucellas, and Carcavellos have a great reputation in Portugal, as also those of Ribatejo, the Moscatel of Setubal, and the light vinhos verdes of Minho (Amarante, Basto, Monsão). The famous treaty of Methuen in 1703, which stipulated that Portuguese wines should be exported to England at a reduced tariff (see pages 126 and 225) has been blamed by some Portuguese for the fall of the price of wines in Portugal. That is, they blame England because the Portuguese after the treaty, in their eagerness to benefit by it, devoted themselves to vine-growing to the exclusion of other branches of agriculture. The Portuguese vine-growers have had to contend against this over-production, against the ravages of phylloxera, which a quarter of a century ago destroyed nearly two hundred thousand acres (since for the most part replanted), against foreign falsifications, against the competition of France, Italy, and Spain.[23] Recently the export of common red wines of Portugal to Brazil has greatly increased, Brazil being now the country to which, after England, Portugal exports most wine—as also the export of generous wines to Germany since the German-Portuguese commercial treaty of 1908. Against these advantages must be set the closure of French markets and the decreasing popularity of port wine in England. The districts of Portugal which produce most wine are those of Lisbon (about 160,000 acres of vineyards), Braga (about 75,000 acres), Vizeu (about 72,000 acres), Santarem (about 65,000), Oporto (about 62,000).

Olive Oil.

The total cultivated area in Portugal exceeds twelve million acres, and of this area olives occupy about a fifteenth, or 329,000 hectares (in 1906), vines 313,000 hectares, and fruit trees (chiefly the fig, almond and carob, which need little rain and flourish in Algarve) about 630,000 acres. Olives are grown principally in the districts of Santarem (75,000 hectares), Leiria (35,000), Castello Branco (33,000), Beja, Bragança, and Coimbra (some 25,000 hectares each), and Faro (20,000). The annual export of olive oil is considerable, but it cannot compare for excellence with the oil of Italy: it is in fact from Italy that oil comes for the tinning of fish in Portugal.