Around Christmas time I put up a piece about the places I visit in Portugal. One or two people were kind enough to ask me to write more as and when. Here is another piece, it is a little bit of a history lesson but important in the context.
Bacalhao
The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, arranged by Pope Alexander VI, divided the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal and forbade Portugal from exploring beyond a meridian drawn 1,600 kilometres miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal was happy to concede having already discovered the continent of South America within its jurisdiction. In recent years, the Portuguese claim to the discovery of North America has gained credence following the unearthing of a stone carved with the Portuguese coat of arms, signed and dated by Miguel Corte Real in 1511 at the mouth of the River Taunton in Massachusetts. Of course, Portugal could not ‘lay claim’ to North America, it was beyond the treaty line.
This time heralded the start of the Golden Age in Portugal spearheaded by the discoveries of the New World and the wealth in timber, spices, and gold returning to Portugal.
Dom Manuel, the Portuguese king, in 1501 sent Miguel Corte Real in search of his brother, Gaspar. In all likelihood, he met with the king in the village of Alcochete, opposite Lisboa, before commencing his final voyage. The King spent a great deal of time in his summer palace at Alcochete where he was born in 1469. The palace, for many years in ruin, is now nearing reconstruction as an exclusive hotel. In the square opposite the ‘palace’ is a compass laid in stone marking out the paths to the discoveries, west pointing out across the estuary and through the mouth of the Tejo to the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil, and America. The adjacent church ‘Misericordia’, once part of the palace, houses a Museum of Sacred (religious) Art. This tiny village boasts some of Europe’s rarest religious art dating from the Golden Age.
Today I walked through the deserted ‘Bacalhao yards’ of Alcochete listening to the lonely cry of Sand Plovers feeding in the now abandoned salt beds reflecting upon the extraordinary history of Portugal.
Bacalhao is salt cod, dried in the sun and reconstituted in any one of 365 ways according to the recipe books. It was for 500 years the staple diet for Portugal also discovered the Newfoundland Grand Banks where Cod the size of a man’s leg were in such abundance they virtually fell into the nets.
So how do you grow strong as a country? First, you feed your people and Bacalhao proved to be that solution. Though the fishing fleets returned to many other Portuguese coastal ports, Alcochete is the one that has the strongest links to the power and politics of the discoveries. The wealth and power that was once Portugal’s to command is reflected in the majesty of the town houses and outlying ‘palaces’ that surround the village.
The fish caught in such quantities had to be preserved, salt was the answer. All around Alcochete are the salt beds, shallow ponds drying in the heat of the sun leaving a sparkling crystalline preservative raked into troughs so the wind can speed the drying and eventually piled in mounds some 20 metres long and 4 metres high covered with a thatch of straw to keep off the rains until required.
The ‘frigatas’, shallow draft river barges, loaded with salt sailed the 15km down the estuary where the fishing fleet docked and exchanged their salt for sides of Cod. Brought back to Alcochete, the Cod was laid out in the Bacalhao yards to dry in the sun and wind.
In the 1930’s concrete posts replaced the old wooden structures and all that is left now are the posts, standing like so many tomb stones, thousands upon thousands along the bank of the Tejo, a memorial to a once great past.
Today the village, a communist governed enclave by the way, like many of the small villages opposite Lisboa, maintains a small salt operation as a tribute to past glories. The salt beds are given over to wild life, heron, storks, egrets, avocet and many smaller marsh feeders thrive here together with a colony of flamingos about 1500 strong who grace the skies with a cloud of pink as they move across the beds to different feeding grounds.
This is a magical place; it has richness beyond measure and stirs memories of a once great power. You can imagine the emissaries of the Pope delivering the Treaty of Tordesillas to Dom Manuel as he stood gazing out to the sea knowing he had what he wanted, though to all other sides it looked like a defeat. He was 25, and had control of more of the world than others even knew existed. Two years later, under pressure from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain he agreed to expel the Jews from Portugal in return for the hand of their daughter. As he opened the New World, so he closed the door on the Jewish population, forbidding them to leave the country and to convert to New Christians. Many fled, some went into hiding, others took their own lives or were killed in the massacre of 1506 when hundreds of Jews were ‘put to the torch’ in Praca de Rossio urged on by Dominican Priests. It took Dom Manuel two weeks to send soldiers to stem the bloodletting. The following sixty years were to be the Golden Age, though ironically it was the persecution of the Jews that ultimately led to the breakdown of the regime, they were the commercial agents, the managers, traders, without their commercial skills the country slowly fell apart finally succumbing to Spanish invasion in 1580.
This tiny village was once the centre of the world; decisions taken here shaped the future of continents yet there is barely a mention of its glorious past. It hangs there, on the breeze, shimmering in the heat haze, evidence all around; all you have to do is look with open eyes.
Will's
This is a link to the earlier piece.
Carrasqueira
Bacalhao
The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, arranged by Pope Alexander VI, divided the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal and forbade Portugal from exploring beyond a meridian drawn 1,600 kilometres miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal was happy to concede having already discovered the continent of South America within its jurisdiction. In recent years, the Portuguese claim to the discovery of North America has gained credence following the unearthing of a stone carved with the Portuguese coat of arms, signed and dated by Miguel Corte Real in 1511 at the mouth of the River Taunton in Massachusetts. Of course, Portugal could not ‘lay claim’ to North America, it was beyond the treaty line.
This time heralded the start of the Golden Age in Portugal spearheaded by the discoveries of the New World and the wealth in timber, spices, and gold returning to Portugal.
Dom Manuel, the Portuguese king, in 1501 sent Miguel Corte Real in search of his brother, Gaspar. In all likelihood, he met with the king in the village of Alcochete, opposite Lisboa, before commencing his final voyage. The King spent a great deal of time in his summer palace at Alcochete where he was born in 1469. The palace, for many years in ruin, is now nearing reconstruction as an exclusive hotel. In the square opposite the ‘palace’ is a compass laid in stone marking out the paths to the discoveries, west pointing out across the estuary and through the mouth of the Tejo to the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil, and America. The adjacent church ‘Misericordia’, once part of the palace, houses a Museum of Sacred (religious) Art. This tiny village boasts some of Europe’s rarest religious art dating from the Golden Age.
Today I walked through the deserted ‘Bacalhao yards’ of Alcochete listening to the lonely cry of Sand Plovers feeding in the now abandoned salt beds reflecting upon the extraordinary history of Portugal.
Bacalhao is salt cod, dried in the sun and reconstituted in any one of 365 ways according to the recipe books. It was for 500 years the staple diet for Portugal also discovered the Newfoundland Grand Banks where Cod the size of a man’s leg were in such abundance they virtually fell into the nets.
So how do you grow strong as a country? First, you feed your people and Bacalhao proved to be that solution. Though the fishing fleets returned to many other Portuguese coastal ports, Alcochete is the one that has the strongest links to the power and politics of the discoveries. The wealth and power that was once Portugal’s to command is reflected in the majesty of the town houses and outlying ‘palaces’ that surround the village.
The fish caught in such quantities had to be preserved, salt was the answer. All around Alcochete are the salt beds, shallow ponds drying in the heat of the sun leaving a sparkling crystalline preservative raked into troughs so the wind can speed the drying and eventually piled in mounds some 20 metres long and 4 metres high covered with a thatch of straw to keep off the rains until required.
The ‘frigatas’, shallow draft river barges, loaded with salt sailed the 15km down the estuary where the fishing fleet docked and exchanged their salt for sides of Cod. Brought back to Alcochete, the Cod was laid out in the Bacalhao yards to dry in the sun and wind.
In the 1930’s concrete posts replaced the old wooden structures and all that is left now are the posts, standing like so many tomb stones, thousands upon thousands along the bank of the Tejo, a memorial to a once great past.
Today the village, a communist governed enclave by the way, like many of the small villages opposite Lisboa, maintains a small salt operation as a tribute to past glories. The salt beds are given over to wild life, heron, storks, egrets, avocet and many smaller marsh feeders thrive here together with a colony of flamingos about 1500 strong who grace the skies with a cloud of pink as they move across the beds to different feeding grounds.
This is a magical place; it has richness beyond measure and stirs memories of a once great power. You can imagine the emissaries of the Pope delivering the Treaty of Tordesillas to Dom Manuel as he stood gazing out to the sea knowing he had what he wanted, though to all other sides it looked like a defeat. He was 25, and had control of more of the world than others even knew existed. Two years later, under pressure from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain he agreed to expel the Jews from Portugal in return for the hand of their daughter. As he opened the New World, so he closed the door on the Jewish population, forbidding them to leave the country and to convert to New Christians. Many fled, some went into hiding, others took their own lives or were killed in the massacre of 1506 when hundreds of Jews were ‘put to the torch’ in Praca de Rossio urged on by Dominican Priests. It took Dom Manuel two weeks to send soldiers to stem the bloodletting. The following sixty years were to be the Golden Age, though ironically it was the persecution of the Jews that ultimately led to the breakdown of the regime, they were the commercial agents, the managers, traders, without their commercial skills the country slowly fell apart finally succumbing to Spanish invasion in 1580.
This tiny village was once the centre of the world; decisions taken here shaped the future of continents yet there is barely a mention of its glorious past. It hangs there, on the breeze, shimmering in the heat haze, evidence all around; all you have to do is look with open eyes.
Will's
This is a link to the earlier piece.
Carrasqueira
and Raphy 
