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Published: December 20th 2013
Let’s be honest, the term ‘faded grandeur’ is decidedly cliché. Though, as much as it’s gift-wrapped to apply to the capital city of Portugal, Lisbon’s fadedness has a very definite edge. It’s a fadedness of cracks rather than corrosion. It is as human as it is physical, and it’s alive, manifest in the problems of a 21
st century nation state: spray-painted on the wall of a 16
th century merchant’s luxury home, a broken stained glass window, a strip of wallpaper torn from the wall. Older than London, Paris or even Rome, this westernmost capital city of Europe situated on the Atlantic Coast looks out over the once vast unknown. Portugal’s pioneering exploration of the New World once brought it staggering wealth. And, though it saw its heyday in generations past, this isn’t Rome, and nobody here is clambering over ruins; this is a living city fully-functioning in the backdrop to a glorious past. Yet, in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, that very process of shrinking and integrating the world, which once bankrolled Lisbon's opulence, has returned to bite Portugal in the arse.
Driving into Portugal, the free movement of persons guaranteed to European citizens means there are
no passport controls or customs, or anything for that matter resembling a traditional border post. Though the imaginary line may have all but disappeared, it had remained virtually unchanged since the 13
th century. Portugal is the oldest European country with defined borders and this has left an indelible imprint that cannot be forgotten. You cannot erase hundreds of years of culture. Though that is not to say things haven’t changed a bit round here lately.
Nowadays, when crossing the River Minho long since fought over and defended as the frontier between Spain and Portugal, one can simply drive up and into the ancient town of Valença do Minho through the massive walled ramparts which surround it. One isn’t met with defenders of the realm holding back marauding Galicians. Nowadays they and their Euros are welcomed with open arms in exchange for linens, tiles and terry towels. Free Trade has replaced borders and everyone is better because of it, or so the theory goes.
Yet, we were flagged down just a few kilometers into the country solely on the strength of our French number plates. Ushered into a holding bay at the side of the
road, the young handsome smiling man greeted us in French, then swiftly reacting to our Franco-phobic facial contortions, continued in flawless English. He didn't want to see ID or our passports. He wanted our credit card details. It is then we learned that little old backwater Portugal is a technological pioneer.
Throughout our journey in Portugal I was to learn that toll roads, of all things, are a source of national pride. This Portuguese system is more advanced than those currently being used in neighboring Spain and France. I could sense every time it was discussed we were supposed to be impressed that we wouldn’t need to stop at toll booths whilst traveling through Portugal; that we would be efficiently covertly tracked, monitored, photographed and billed electronically for the stretch of road traveled on. I would nod and smile and then announce it was a source of national pride in Britain that we
don't have toll roads!
For some unfathomable reason I cannot quite locate in my cluttered memory vaults, I wrote my undergrad dissertation on the topic of road pricing. So somewhat ironically, these days I am ideologically opposed to this effectual restriction
of my freedom of movement, and I am particularly averse to the idea of my activities being tracked by some corporate bureaucratic entity and being made to pay for the privilege. Fortunately, this situation is avoidable, and having been given a map showing Portugal's technologically advanced, and excellently efficient toll road system, we made it our ideological mission to avoid it by going off the toll beaten track wherever possible.
We spent our first afternoon in Viana do Castelo up at the mirador by Basilica de Santa Luzia, eating ice cream, overlooking the town and Atlantic Ocean far below. This being one of the historical entry-points for Portuguese explorers and traders through the ages, many of the older buildings originated during this period. But the 16
th Century was a fair while back and like Pontevedra over the border in Spain, it gave off a vibe of distantly faded grandeur. Clearly not a well-known or trodden destination, it saw only a trickle of the tourist activity it probably merited, adding to the ambiance of a forgotten town.
I was slightly perturbed when my Spanish was met with English at the Tourist Information Office. Though a
few more of these encounters over the next few hours led me to quickly conclude that those who could (and these were many) speak English, they apparently much preferred conversing with us in that language than the more closely related Spanish language of their neighbours. In hindsight this makes perfect sense. Besides which, the Treaty of Windsor (1386) between Britain and Portugal is the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world which is still in force, which pretty much makes us the oldest bestest friends in the whole world everrr!
Anyways, the reason I was in the tourism office was to seek local advice on the best route to Braga,
avoiding toll roads. The guys in there said we were in for a treat. The road we took was lovely. The late afternoon light basked the steep hilly slopes dotted with manor houses and castles of this region. The route led us through small villages and towns where scenes resembled some bygone European idyll.
One scene etched in my mind was of an elderly couple tending their agricultural land besides their cottage, dressed in what I presume to be traditional garb, as the sun’s last
Market
Coimbralight disappeared over the mountainside. Un-spoilt Portuguese peasants in traditional dress living simple, uncomplicated lives in a romanticized rural idyll, happily at work in pre-industrial activities. As an anthropologist I should be immune to such weak-at-the-knees romanticism, but for this urbane quasi-European Brit, living in 21
st Century Shanghai, this slice of romantic peasant lifestyle was nothing short of fantastical.
I wanted to stop, gawk and photograph, but we were still pretty far from Braga, dusk was turning to darkness and on these winding roads it was difficult to calculate our arrival time, and we as yet had no idea where we were even going to camp.
Agriculture in Portugal is based on small to medium-sized family-owned dispersed units. If you travel further inland from here there are countless once-thriving agricultural communities which now sit abandoned, slowly reclaimed by their environment, in scenes reminiscent of the temple complexes of Central America and South East Asia. Gorgeous and rustic these villages may be, but for the people who grew up there, the reality is that life was tough and there were easier places to live. Villagers left to seek a different life in Portugal’s cities, some
traveled to France, Germany or even the Americas. Now in an ironic twist many foreigners buy up these houses (or sometimes entire villages) seeking out seclusion and peace where they can abandon modernity and hope to live more simple, peaceful, sustainable lives. I can’t pretend the thought hasn’t crossed our minds.
But, though this may satiate that longing for an antithesis of post-industrial society, it doesn’t look particularly impressive on Portugal’s economic balance sheet. So, before we romanticize this situation or indeed gloat in the resultant cheap prices it offers for visitors to Portugal, it is important to recognize that these relatively cheap prices are further a by-product of Portugal’s current financial crisis. In receiving a €78 billion IMF-EU bailout package in 2011 the government was obliged to subject its people to tax hikes, a freeze on lower-wages and cuts of higher-wages as well as pensions. To sack one in twenty public employees, increase civil service working week from 35 to 40 hours and raise the retirement age by a year to 66, all in order to reduce spending and debt.
Hotwire And so to our own domino effect of circumstances...the
toll road had led us off the toll beaten track, which meant we were now winging it in the dark without a place to stay, which led us to the rekindling of our North American Hotwire addiction, Euro style. I’m sure we’re not the only people to do this, but we’d travel in the day, an hour before it's time to call it quits we’d boot up the computer, find a free WiFi signal, and pick a totally random hotel on Hotwire.com. Browsing about on the net that evening in Northern Portugal, we discovered that booking last minute in this economic climate, an extra ten euros per night stretched a surprisingly long way; allowing us to upgrade from a campsite to a three-star hotel, oftentimes with breakfast.
This is a period for the Portuguese to tighten their collective purse strings, and as a result disposable income and products in this less than essential recreational category are the first to take a hit. However, people understandably still want to take their annual holidays, which led to a situation where campsites would be packed solid, whilst 3 and 4 star hotels lay virtually empty.
The consequence
of this situation was that our camping holiday was about to take a backseat. The central location of hotels as apposed to out in the suburbs where most campsites are found, allowed us the further luxury of exploring the city from our front door, on foot, with no need to navigate the European subterranean parking system. Time could be saved not setting up and taking down the tent. We’d have the benefit of air-conditioning and en-suite bathrooms as the mercury began soaring while we moved south through the Iberian Peninsula.
And so, in North American jargon, our decision to cease camping was a “no-brainer”. Only downside was it meant less picnics/BBQ camping food and more dining in little local restaurants. Shame. We would still satiate our desire for local produce by researching the region's best cheeses, meats, breads and wines; and taking this knowledge to the local market. If not consumed in late night nibble fests, these delicacies would gloriously adorn the following day's packed lunch. Besides which, cheese should really be served at room temperature, and our glove box made a perfect (if stinky) food larder.
We visited the northern towns of Braga
and Guimaraes both possessing a long and important history in the founding of the Portuguese nation. The town of Guimarães, for example, was Portugal’s first capital and the birth of Portugal as independent country since 1128, as a base for the conquest of the central and southern lands of the Iberian Peninsula, ruled for close to 800 years by the Moors.
Then, in the 16th century, due to their distance from the coast, Braga and Guimares did not profit from the adventures associated with the Age of Portuguese Discoveries. By then Portugal was looking out onto the New World and towns positioned to take advantage of the new trade this brought, namely Porto, Lisbon and what was to be Portugal’s new capital, Coimbra.
Faded grandeur Coimbra University, founded in 1290, is one of the oldest universities in the world. It is today Portugal’s undisputed student city (with 20,000 or nearly 15%!o(MISSING)f the population). A very lively place, when the students are about -- I was once informed by a beautiful Portuguese girl from Coimbra, some years back. In mid-summer, with far less people around it gave off a
more refined and laid-back vibe. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the aesthetic attraction of the place.
We had decided against the idea of spending the Summer Olympics in my hometown, London, not because of any aversion to sport, but because of our predilection for travel. As we checked into our hotel in Coimbra that first night we gathered around the TV to watch the opening ceremony. The following day was to be the men's cycling road race, which saw Jennifer and Mandalay take off in the car to visit some castle outside of town, whilst Kiva and I stayed closeted in the room during the heat of the day with the curtains drawn, glued to the TV. Afterwards, we hit the ancient streets to explore till sundown. And so began the start of a developing travel pattern begun in Coimbra, watching Olympics and visiting local markets by day, ambling up and down the labyrinthine streets of University Hill and spending lively evenings enjoying various cultural spectacles. We stayed a few nights in Coimbra, and could have stayed more, were it not for time. Tick tock.
Each July Óbidos castle hosts a ‘Traditional Medieval
Market'. For two weeks the castle and the surrounding town recreate the spirit of medieval Europe, with people playing historical dress-up as jugglers, peasants, jesters and minstrels. We came as a family of 21
st century tourists, along with most of the other day-trippers who literally swarmed the walled interior of Obidos. This saw us immediately retreat to the walls themselves, traversing along the top, allowing us a vantage point over the surrounding countryside and vineyards giving an appreciation of the castle's strategic location and down onto the terracotta-roofed houses packed inside the medieval walls. Climbing down and exploring the higgledy piggledy sun-bleached whitewashed houses accented with a streak of blue or yellow you could be easily mistaken for thinking you were on a Greek island.
We managed to bag a suite in a wonderful old hotel in Lisbon for an embarrassingly low price. After exploring the historical centre of Lisbon on our first evening we used our first full day, after pastries and coffees at the local bakery, to join the day-trippers. We drove down to Sintra to explore the town, hiked up the hilltops to The Castle of the Moors to look out over the landscape,
down at the centre of town and over at the Pena National Palace, of which Lord Byron once wrote, "I must just observe that the village of Cintra in Estremadura is the most beautiful in the world."
Most of the Portuguese expeditions during the Age of Discovery left from Lisbon. The 16th century was Lisbon's golden era: the city was the focal point of commerce between Africa, India, the Far East and Brazil, from which the city acquired great riches through the trade in spices, slaves, sugar, textiles and other goods.
Though ironically today, one of the founding countries, and prime beneficiaries of early globalization has seen that very phenomenon come full circle. As has been seen the world over, business, industries and jobs have packed up and moved to where resources and labour are cheap in order to meet demands for cheaper products and raise profit margins. With the adoption of the Euro as their national currency Portuguese businesses find it increasingly difficult to sell their products at price-competitive levels to international markets. Portugal, whose economy relied so heavily on more traditional pastimes such as textiles, clothing, footwear, cork and wood products, has
been hit hard.
Unemployment is currently 18% (43% of under 25’s!) and EU mandated government cuts will inevitably see this figure rise before it falls. However, as with most developed nations, particularly those who can reap the bitter tasting benefits of European Union membership, the service sector is where they are attempting to reposition their economy. And there can be no better place for Portugal to start than the creation of more jobs in viable sectors such as tourism. It’s fantastically well-endowed to compete in this business.
However, tourism in Portugal has increasingly seen competition from Eastern European destinations, like Croatia, which are often deemed cheaper; whether this is currently a truism or not. The problem I see is one of perception. The majority of Northern European tourists predominantly come to Portugal seeking sun and beaches. Nothing wrong with that, since they contribute a sizeable amount to the countries coffers. The problem is these spots are concentrated in and around the resort towns of the Algarve in the south. Here prices can soar as high as the temperatures, and there are a higher proportion of hotels and resorts here are owned by foreign companies.
This is a shame, because Portugal is so much more than that. Having now tasted the delights of Portugal, when we return in future our trip will focus overwhelmingly on the myriad cultural, gastronomic, environmental experiences this country offers, and they are spread throughout. Portugal is a land famed for its exploration of other lands, but it is also a land which screams out for exquisite, slow, lengthy and meaningful exploration, of itself.
We planned to camp throughout our time in Portugal, though had to wait until the end of our journey to actually do so upon reaching The Algarve, and Lagos. The campground was hard, dry, noisy, cramped and gravely. But the location was fantastic, just a couple hundred metres from where we wanted to be. This meant we could walk to the beach at will, and I could wake up at the crack of dawn with my camera and scramble around those honey-coloured cliff tops in the golden light.
The south is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but Portugal is so much more than that, and so much more than we experienced in our time there. It is high time
Portugal starts shouting this fact from those honey-coloured cliff tops… those terracotta rooftops…those medieval castle turrets and those snowy mountaintops brilliantly adorning this most westerly slice of Old World Europe.
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Mark
non-member comment
Same ... but some shocking news...
Was there twice earlier this year after never being before and had similar experiences. But more importantly, some news to piss on your road toll parade - the UK is losing the good old tax disc (next year I think) and it will be done online with the Big Bro cameras checking that you've done it. Ahhh, progress even reaches the UK eventually.