Such a fête is far more popular than the bull-fight, about which in Portugal there seems to be something a little artificial, with none of the fierce passion that it evokes in Spain. As a spectacular display the Portuguese touradas can be very fine, and there is no horror of killed horses, though the toreador himself has been killed before now, despite the bull’s blunted horns. The death of the well-known Portuguese bull-fighter Fernando d’Oliveira, in Lisbon’s bull-ring at the Campo Pequeno on the 12th of May, 1904, caused an immense impression. A special feature in Portugal are the touradas nocturnas (first introduced in 1880), carried on by artificial light. The more spirited among the young men looking on are keen to show their own skill and valour in the arena, and on special occasions the toreadores are of noble birth.
Sports.
Perhaps the greatest surprise of the Englishman visiting Portugal, especially if he comes from Spain, where he may have imbibed the false notion that the Portuguese are an enervated and decadent people, is to find that a considerable and ever-growing number of Portuguese take part and interest in sports and games—horse-racing, regattas, lawn-tennis, football, motoring, riding, fencing, swimming. Football and lawn-tennis are fairly common, cricket is played at Oporto, and in spite of a vague belief that golf is played by the mad Englishman on horseback, his object being to hit the ball and arrive on the green before it, a golf-links is to be laid down in the grounds of the new thermal establishment, hôtel and casino at Estoril.
“Brazileiros.”
In Portugal there is a small and narrowing circle of old nobility, haughty and aloof, naturally growing more aloof as they have seen in recent years titles showered or money made the sole measure of respect. Lisbon, certainly, materialistic as a South American city, is at the feet of the first brazileiro who returns rich to his native land.
Oporto.
At Oporto, too, although the atmosphere is totally different from that of Lisbon, the enriched brazileiro plays a great part. It is, of course, principally a business city, and has something grim and forbidding, a reserve foreign to Lisbon. The large number of English wine merchants and its communications by sea prevent it, however, from being a typical Portuguese city.
Braga.
This is reserved for Braga in the north, which retains a peculiar old-world flavour, and where probably there are not more than half-a-dozen foreigners. As most towns in Portugal, it is a steep city on a hill, its streets of houses of many-coloured azulejos, tiles, and washes, going up precipitously to the splendid old cathedral. The inhabitants are conservative as mountaineers, and it has the reputation of being a stronghold of the reactionaries.
North and South.