Of the Algarve, Sun, Dry Bread and Soft Bread
The Director and his Museum

«When the traveller was in Alcoutim, he saw perched on a hill a round and massive castle, that looked more like a truncated tower than a complicated military construction. He thought it would offer good views over the plain. But he was wrong. From a distance, he imagined it was still in Portugal, but in the end to get there he discovered he would have to cross de Guadiana, hire a boatman, show his passport - in short, it would be a whole other journey. The far side of the Guadiana is Sanlucar, and there Spanish is spoken. But the Portuguese and the Spanish town face each other like mirror images across the water, both of them with their white houses, both built as steeply as a Christmas crib. They must be very similar when it comes to laughter and tears as well.

Wherever the traveler arrives, he likes to strike up a conversation: Any excuse will do, and finding a former chapel that is now used as a shop and a crate warehouse is as good as any other. All the more so because at the back there is an altar with the sculpture of a saint on it. The traveller asks if he can go in. The sculpture is a fine one of St Anthony with the infant Jesus in his arms. How on earth does it come to be in here, in the midst of all the hammering and goods for sale, without even a prayer to console it? The traveller talks to the owner outside, sitting on the steps. He is a short, scrawny man of sixty or more years. He says; “It came down the river during the Civil War in Spain, and I found it.” It could well be, the traveller thinks – the war was forty years ago, when the saint's saviour must have been around fifteen. “I wouldn't think of selling it. He's there for whoever wants to look at him. That's enough.”

(…)
They can see the church opposite them. It's at the top of a set of steps, and has a fine Renaissance portal. The traveller prepares to be disappointed as usual: either the door will be locked, or the priest will be away somewhere. But this priest is Irish, and used to the idea that the church should be open, so if there is no-one looking after it, that must mean he is inside. He was. Seated on a bench, like the priest in Pavia. When he heard steps, he got up, nodded his head solemnly, then sat down again. The traveller was so intimidated he did not dare open his mouth. He looked up at the magnificent capitals of the columns in the nave, the bas-relief in the baptistery, and then crept out again. Inside the front door were two easels with religious notices stuck on them: the hours of the Mass and other announcements, some of them in Portuguese, but mostly in English. The traveller suddenly wonders which land he is in.

He soon discovers. The land to his right, which rises in a series of waves that never reach higher than six hundred metres, and where the rivers struggle to flow forward, is Caldeirão, also known as Mu. A land of scrub and dry earth. The main roads seem to bypass it; the only ones that cross it are poor and few and far between. It's a harsh place, where even the names of the towns sound rough: Corujos, Estorninhos, Cachopo, Tareja, Feiteira. The story of the journey would be very different if the traveller had the time to venture into the interior of this dry plateau.

He probably owes a debt to Castro Marim too. He stopped here only to look at the beautiful archangel Gabriel in the town church, and walked up to the castle, attracted by the unusual red colour of its stone. Then, after looking round the original Arab fortress, he returned to the highway, and headed for Vila Real de Santo António. The sea is in sight, the waves gleam in the distance.

The traffic in Vila Real was crazy. The traveller, who had been hoping to take his time to savour the street layout designed by the Marquês de Pombal, found himself caught up in the game of snakes and ladders of the one-way system, soon discovering to his cost there were many more snakes than ladders. This is where the village of Santo António de Avenilha was, until it fell into the sea. The Marquês de Pombal came down here to repeat in miniature the urbanistic feat he had pulled off in Lisbon, drawing straight lines and squares and succeeding - not him, but his architects - in conserving a neighbourly atmosphere. In the main square, the traveller particularly liked the attic windows, which looked too large for the buildings they were a part of, and yet managed to stay in harmony with the overall context of the town.

From there he went to Tavira, where he promised himself to return one day to see all he wanted to: the Carmo, Santa María do Castelo, the Misericórdia, St Paul. Impossible to detail all the doors he knocked at, all the people he stopped in the street. There was no shortage of information offered, but when he acted on it, either the person who should have been there wasn't, or whoever was there did not have the authority to show him round. The traveller made his way down to the quayside to soothe his troubled brow with the sea breeze, because even three paces inland he was in a baking oven. But, so near to the end of his adventures, he was determined not to admit defeat (die if he must, but he will see everything first) and continued on to Luz. Here fortune was on his side. The church is by the roadside, and appears as if by a happy coincidence - and this adjective is very appropriate, as the church of Luz de Tavira is easy to walk around because it has no other buildings close to it, and shows an unusual purity of style, heightened by a subtle use of colour, and is genuinely a happy church. Inside, this first impression is only reinforced, thanks to its wide naves and tall columns, its three baptismal fonts: anyone who arrives in Tavira feeling hot and bothered, should visit Luz, and may be fortunate enough to find the door open. And even if it is closed, he should feel contented with the view of the outside - that is reward enough.

The traveller did not see much in Olhão apart from an uninteresting parish church (which does, though, have a magnificent Baroque Risen Christ), but he did buy a bunch of grapes and make a discovery. The grapes, which he ate down on the fishermen's wharf, were not particularly sweet, but his discovery, in all modesty, was a brilliant one. It is related to the well-known story of the Moorish king married to a Nordic princess who was pining away for her snowy home country, which troubled the king greatly as he loved her a lot. The story goes that the king found a clever answer to the problem: he ordered his servants to plant thousands, millions of almond trees and then one day, when they all came into bloom, he went to the room of the palace where his princess was wasting away, and had all the windows flung open. (…)

But the traveller has always wondered the following: how was it possible for the consumptive princess to cling on to life until all the millions of almond trees grew and were ready to blossom? To his mind, this just goes to show that the legend is false. The traveller suddenly hit on the true story: the royal palace was in a city, or an important place like this one, and round it were houses, walls, all the buildings one finds in a town, all of them painted the colours their owners had chosen. Few of them were white. So then the king, seeing that his princess was on her death-bed, published a decree which said that all the houses had to be painted white, and that this should be done on a certain date, from one day to the next. And so it came to be. When the princess looked out of the window, she saw the city all in white, and this time there was no danger the flowers would wilt and die, so she really was cured. And that wasn't the end of the story. There are no almond trees in the Alentejo, but the houses are white. Why? Because the king ruled over that province as well, and ordered the same thing done there. The traveller finishes his bunch of grapes, thinks over his discovery and finds it convincing, and so tosses the old version of the almond legend aside.

In Estói, the traveller sought out the palace of the counts of Carvalhal and the ruins of Milreu. And just when he thought he was going to have to mare hanger and and the ruins of Milreu. And just when he thought he was going to have to move heaven and earth to get into private property to see the palace and its gardens, he found a wooden gate that opened to his touch, and an avenue of trees welcoming him in. The only sign of life were two dogs, who were only bothered about the flies troubling them in the heat. All the time the traveller was inside, climbing and descending staircases, looking at all there was to see, nobody came to ask him to leave, or even to ask him what he was doing there. It was true that an iron gate giving on to a third part of the ruins was locked, but there was more than enough of interest on this side of it. Styles and tastes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were mixed in the layout of the gardens, the profusion of statues and busts, in the balustrades, and the decorative tiles. Two large reclining statues of Venus and Diana had a background of tiles decorated with plants and exotic birds, creating a very Art-Nouveau effect. The busts on the mouldings showed the tranquil faces of Herculano, Camões, Castilho, Garrett, and, somewhat surprisingly, the Marquês de Pombal. If the traveller did not have such set ideas about Sleeping Beauty palaces, and if the mysterious evening light at Junqueira had faded from his memory, perhaps he would have adopted these gardens and architecture. But the light here is too strong, and the deserted aspect of the whole place robs it of mystery. So the traveller simply accepts what he is given, and does not try to make too much of it: if he sees a pair of busts that are the Emperor and Empress of Germany, he simply finds it curious, nothing more. The lake is empty, and the harsh whiteness of the marble statues hurts the eyes. The traveller sits on a bench, listens to the ceaseless chirrup of the crickets, and is almost lulled to sleep. Or rather; he was lulled to sleep, because when he opened his eyes again, he had no idea where he was. He could visualise the ruined temple in front of him, imagined the fiestas that took place there, with music, dancing, the couples strolling around or dispersing through the park, and slowly recovered his senses: life here must have been good. Eventually he stood up, went over to look at some doors and neared inside. (…)»