Alentejo

I have been in Alentejo these past days. It's Easter's holidays. Easter holidays are e new thing for me. When i was in school i had Easter break, two weeks without school, one before and other after. In those days my parents never went out on vacations. Only when i was around 16 we started to go out in Easter. One of the first times, if not the first, was a trip to Algarve. My father and his partners needed a week retirement to study a project for a new company they where building. To get to Algarve we must go through Alentejo. In those years there where much less roads, and almost no highways. It was a day trip to make the 700km, it took more than 10 hours. That wasn't my first time in Algarve, we used to come with my godmother in September to some days at the beach.

That year they decided to go to Arraiolos to visit some friends of my mother. It was the first time i really looked at Alentejo. Usually i just slept trough it. I was amazed with the scenery, the fields, the heat and the sky. I was prepared for something different because of a teacher i had at the time. She gave classes here, somewhere, and was in love of this land. This teacher was a sister in god. She was hard with us and fair and fun. It's because of her that i can read poetry. If it wasn't for her i was just another person with no inner capacity to understand the power in those small lines. She also was fun, we used to play ball with her during lunch break, and she payed to win. She also made us study some old Portuguese plays from Gil Vicente. One day, after finishing with "Auto da Barca do Inferno", she just told us that next class, the following day, we had to make that play. We told her that wasn't fair, she wasn't giving us time to prepare. She said ok, no problem, i am not even going to tell all of you what parts your are going to play, you just have to know them all, all of you. She got us speechless. Next day we made that play in class, she called us all at random to give some lines, if we had trouble she would guide us, and we really did that play. It was a fun class and a lesson bigger than the lines we spoke. We just did it.

I stormed several time more through these fields, one time using only national roads, not highways, because there where none at the time, and also no police radars, i just made an average of 180km/hour coming from Algarve. Of course i just didn't had time to look outside the road. And i really missed that since that day in Easter. So, when i first had a chance, i came to know this land better.

All Portuguese words starting with "Al" are of Arabic origin "Al" meaning "the". Alentejo means the land after Tejo. Tejo is a river that crosses Portugal from East to West at the middle from North to South. Crossing that river, coming from the north, many things happen, the mountains almost disappear, the weather get hotter and the water is less. Also the sky becomes larger. When we live always surrounded by mountains, in small valleys with rivers down, we just tend to be more inner centered. Here we change to other, more open person, more relaxed also. Here time is different, it flows at a very particular pace and is always enough to do what is important.

In Alentejo you can get a glimpse of many years of history, today i saw some neolithic dolmens in the middle of farm where black pigs where living free. After dinner we went to see the remains of a roman temple. During the drive to a Vila Viçosa, we just passed many memories of moors, they teached us how to use water, how to get it from the ground and place it in the right place. Some of those wheels are still in use. I also saw a Cathedral, a Palace of Kings in a town of poetry and several castles. We had lunch in a place called Alandroal, with a small castle, built in 1298, and church inside the castle. The restaurant was using some of the castle walls for himself. It was in the middle of nowhere and full of people from everywhere.

Alentejo is also magical, apart from the traditions related to dolmens, there are the castles. In all castles there is a story of a princess, a moor princess saved by some christian knight. Not saved from others but saved to love. Always making the knight feel in love for her, facing together all the impossible. I didn't read many Disney stories when i was a kid, instead i read all those old legends from Portuguese history. Many castles, including some important ones, where conquered because of those impossible passions, some even without a fight. And they still are here, at Alentejo.

If you want to know more you can check this link (in Portuguese): Mouras Encantadas