Beira Day 1 - Go East Look West

We have a singular opportunity; we have the use of a house in an area of Portugal called the 'Beira Interior'. My Mac's translator says beira means 'edge', so we imagine this is like a 'borderland' – it's the 'old west' frontier during the time of Portugal's separation from León and the earliest monarchies of Dom Afonso Henriques and his successors:

There is no reason to believe that the demographic revolution did not happen in Portugal as it did all over Europe in the 11th, 12, and 13th centuries. Semi-deserted areas in Beira and Trás-os-Montes, which had never been populated before, were now occupied by small groups of settlers. The breaking down of the old Roman 'villa' was accelerated, and within each 'villa' the smaller units ('casais', the Portuguese equivalent of 'mansi') assigned to one family were parcelled out for all practical purposes among the surviving heirs. It was around that time that the new 'villae', in the sense of hamlets or villages rather than the old Roman exploitation form, were found here and there. (A. H. de Oliveira Marques, "A Very Short History of Portugal", 2018)

So Portugal's 'old west' is to the east, and very old. Home-base during our visit is the village of Alfaiates, a tiny castle-town just a few minutes from the border (pop. 331 in 2011). Once the county seat, Alfaiates sits in the Côa River Valley, between the Serra da Estrella hills and Spain. The Côa watershed feeds the Douro and flows, counter-intuitively and uniquely, to the northeast.

In de Oliveira Marques' "History", there is an illustration of Portugal's border dropping southward during the Reconquista. The first border is labelled with the year 1064, and is drawn along the Mondego and the Serra da Estrella. Eye-balling it, Alfaiates sits just outside this line – the village was in the kingdom of León until the Tratado de Alcanizes in 1297.

The drive from Lisbon takes about four hours, so we plan a rest-stop in Abrantes, with a picturesque castelo high above the Tejo and easy access from the A-23. Unfortunately, when we arrive, the café is closed.

 

 

Inside the castelo, there is a beautifully restored church, the Igreja da Santa Maria do Castelo, which dates from 1215. Though rather plain on the outside, there are incredible carved tombs and recovered frescos inside. The frescos, which were hidden under the patterned tile, retain so much color and life. And everything is wonderfully presented.

The tombs form the Panteão dos Almeidas, the family of the Counts of Abrantes. The sepulchers vary in style from classical arches and pediments, to 'flaming' Gothic, to Manueline. The azulejos seem to date from the installation of the most recent tombs during the sixteenth century.

 

 

 

 

The remainder of the fortress consists of the torre de menagem (keep), which sits on a wide grassy mound. Facing the west is a series of oblong bastions, connected by arched and terraced walls. This part of the complex also contains the Palácio dos Governadores and the Entrada Nascente at the north. The south and west-facing walls are built in layers, with an old ruined porta falsa (traitor's gate) at the lower level.

Outside the fortress, along the south-facing walls, there is a multi-level garden – a great place to walk, enjoy the views of the castelo and the Tejo, and stretch before getting back in the rental car.

 

 

As the A-23 turns north through Fundão, the landscape shifts. Instead of the grassy hills of the Vale do Tejo, we begin to see large boulders dotting the sandy slopes. Soon the boulders dominate, and the grassy hills become the dots. At times the boulders and hills part, and we see open plains of pasture grass, corn, or olive trees, with gigantic white cows and flocks of sheep – all the grazing pastures enclosed by tidy stone boundaries.

We arrive in Alfaiates just before sunset. We acclimate ourselves to the house, unpack, and step out to try to find dinner. We pass the Igreja Paroquial de Santiago Maior and the Adro da Igreja, a patio with astonishing vistas over the small stone houses to the farmlands. Feral cats roam freely, and the locals seem to leave the tops of the dumpsters open to keep them from starving.

We find dinner past the ramshackle castelo (currently being renovated), at a restaurant in the Largo de Nossa Senhora da Póvoa. A solemn statue stands watch under a street lamp (which turns on promptly at seven-fifteen). Next to her is a tractor with a front-end loader full of pumpkins, along with several other haphazardly parked vehicles. Her dedication reads: protegei os emigrantes (protect the emigrants, perhaps those departing as well as arriving). To one side of the largo, a stop light manages the non-existent traffic – there isn't even a real intersection. As we eat, the local dogs stare impatiently, wondering if we will finish our meal. At a nearby table, the locals watch futebol (what else?) on a large, flat-panel TV.

As the moon sets at Nossa Senhora's feet, a deep darkness and the mosquitoes arrive together. This makes our first impression of Alfaiates.