Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

At Estoril a thermal station, with casino, gardens, golf-links, etc., is in process of construction. The Estoril climate even excels that of Lisbon, being slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer. It is a little surprising that more foreigners do not settle temporarily or permanently in this region, which is so easy of access and has so many advantages. The considerable number of Englishmen now living in Portugal are with few exceptions engaged in business. Possibly foreigners are afraid of revolutions, but revolutions in Portugal do not as a rule affect the foreigner in the slightest degree. Gambling, on a large scale, and great luxury, it is true, he will not find, but cleanliness and ordinary comfort are to be had at the existing hôtels, and any other deficiencies are amply compensated for by the excellent climate and the charms and interest of the surrounding country, and by the courtesy and helpfulness of its inhabitants. It is not often that travellers can live in a comfortable hôtel, have English newspapers, English books (from the Lisbon International Library), English tinned foods and tobacco, all the delights and none of the drawbacks of a southern climate, and at the same time such scenery to their hand as that of Cintra, and such architecture as is to be had on all sides in a day’s motor drive, besides lawn-tennis and golf, and the historical associations of the Peninsular War.

Backwardness of the Country.

Rarely does the country appear to be fully developed, yet even so it produces such a wealth of fruits and flowers that evidently with greater care, better methods, and a more widely extended system of irrigation, it might be a perfect paradise. It would be unfair to attribute the neglect and backwardness and misery prevailing throughout this lovely country entirely to the character of the inhabitants. The accumulated misfortunes of their history for the last three centuries would be enough to explain it; but they certainly have been inclined to neglect their own native soil for alien enterprises, and are only now beginning to realise that the future of Portugal lies in Portugal. In time, no doubt, Algarve, Estremadura, and Minho will be fringed with prosperous watering-places and with busy seaports, to which railways from the interior will carry many minerals, wood from existing forests and from land still awaiting afforestation, as well as the most varied vegetables, fruits and flowers. (Foreign countries will find it profitable also to import on a large scale earthenware manufactures, azulejos, and the majolica wares of Caldas da Rainha.) Irrigation will have transformed much matto country into flourishing gardens and orchards, and Alemtejo will become in fact as well as in name the granary of Portugal. It is quite possible for Portugal to become one continuous garden city, through which flawless roads will whirl the traveller in a few hours from Valença to Faro, and from Elvas to Cintra. This is the object at which those who care more for Portugal than for party politics must aim.

Travelling in Portugal.

But the charm will have departed, and present-day travellers may congratulate themselves that the change is not in their day. For now parts of the country are not to be seen without considerable effort, and have the added fascination of things difficult of attainment. The Portuguese rarely journey for enjoyment south of the Tagus, to the land alemtejo, yet both the Alemtejo and Algarve are delightful districts, and fully repay any little discomforts which a visit to them may entail, and the impression left is of a great region of wild flowers and garden fruits lying in a semi-tropical sunshine, round a few villages and ancient towns. Indeed, those who have seen not only Minho and the massed rhododendrons in flower on the Serra do Gerez, and the smooth mountains of the Serra da Estrella, apparently bare and desolate, covered with cistus, lavender, and a thousand other varieties of wild flowers, but also the rare flowers and rhododendrons of the Serra de Monchique in Algarve, and the giant patchwork of all kinds and colours of flowers which make beautiful the pastures and wastelands of Alemtejo, from the tall branching asphodels, like chandeliers of chalcedony, to the serried fields of thistle or hawksweed, will readily extend to the whole of Portugal the name of “Switzerland of Spain,” which has been bestowed on Galicia. (The word “Spain,” meaning the whole Peninsula, once common, is still in use occasionally, as in the title of the Archbishop of Braga, who is “Primate of the Spains.”) The roads of Portugal are a delight by reason of their wayside springs and streams and groves, and the hedges which in height and thickness rival those of Devonshire, and have all the luxuriant growth of the south. Or, when the road cuts through matto, thick masses of cistus often invade it on either side, and the air is heavy with its scent. (Both in leaf and scent it strongly resembles escalonia.) A walking tour is more often a hardship than a pleasure, or rather its pleasure is of recollections, especially where, as in Spain, inns are rare and food in an inn rarer. But Portugal, that is in the northern provinces—for the sun tyrannises south of the Tagus and shade is rarer—is an ideal country for such a tour.

Inns.

The witty Nicolaus Clenardus, in the sixteenth century, after complaining that at an inn in Spain his horses had well fasted, and he himself had had but half an ounce of meat in an olla, and departed as he came, latrante stomacho, admitted that in Portugal things were better: omnia mitescere visa sunt. It is true that the author of the Arte de Furtar, writing a few generations later, gives us a melancholy initiation into the ways of the inn-hostess of Beja. “I saw her,” he says, “buy two cabbages for a halfpenny. She cast them into a caldron with two large pimentos well crushed and another halfpenny-worth of oil. She boiled them twice, and without ever rising from her stool, she made thirty plates full at a penny each, with which she feasted guests and carters alike, and they professed themselves satisfied.” There is something sinister about this stationary woman. Sedet aeternumque sedebit. Probably if an old shoe had been to hand, instead of the pimentões, in it would have gone. But, however far afield the twentieth century traveller wanders, Heaven will probably keep him from such a hostess in Portugal—in Spain she is still common—and everywhere he will find great willingness to attend to his requirements, such readiness in fact that he will probably expect to be asked for several shillings and be surprised to be charged only in vintens. Of course, in a sense the more poorly he goes clad the better he will fare in the out-of-the-way parts, the poor reserving a wealth of kindliness and ready service exclusively for the poor. The hospedarias are bare and clean, the estalagens are not much less comfortable than the hospedarias, and sometimes as clean. The estalagem is where any passing wayfarer—carriers, almocreves, etc., put up; the hospedarias are rather for more permanent guests, officers quartered in the town, and so on. But even the wayside venda, perhaps consisting of a single room, roofed over with branches and with the trodden ground for floor, will be able to provide a meal of eggs, coffee, and bread.

Walking in Portugal.

The water difficulty is not present as in Spain. Springs and rivulets of most excellent transparent water, flowing cleanly over granite, are ever to the hand of the thirsty, icy cold even in the dog days, and the great flowered hedges will yield him a plot of shade for a rest even if he does not hit on some pleasant grove of trees and flowers. It is to be hoped that the Sociedade de Propaganda de Portugal, which watches over the interests of the more respectable tourist, will not forget to attend to the needs of the humble pedestrian, and indeed of the motorist, by seeing to it that sign-posts and milestones be set on all the roads. These can be of such a character as not in the least to obtrude upon the rustic character of these delightful roads. In Portugal the pedestrian has the great advantage over the motorist that he is able to digest what he sees, and even he will have to advance in very leisurely fashion in order to do that. It is the charm of Alcobaça and Batalha—those two marvellous buildings—that they have no railway. You may drive or walk, but even if you walk it is but a few miles from the one to the other, through a tempting country of dense pinewoods and heather, with the village of Aljubarrota and the famous battlefield thrown in. To see in one day the multifarious splendours of Batalha and Alcobaça, not to speak of Leiria, is more than is good for the ordinary person.

Leiria.