The Vast and Burning Lands of Alentejo
Looking and Leeping

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When he gets back to Serpa, the traveller has to make a great effort to get used to the world of ordinary mortals once more. On the road out towards Beja he admires the abandoned chapel to St Sebastian, with its beautiful mixture of Manueline and Moorish styles. A mixture, he thinks, that would be better called a symbiosis, because the two are combined in a living, vital way. But it can't have been so vital, the voice of reason tells him, because this particular style never spread beyond the Alentejo, nor did it last for very long. Yes it can, his intuition replies, because all civil architecture - houses, chimneys, porches - betrays the signs of where it has come from: Arabic methods of building, which lasted far beyond the Reconquest, and those Gothic ideas that were added to them at a later stage.

The traveller is lost in this kind of musing, when suddenly the River Guadiana appears before him again, this time broad and peaceful. The two of them are playing hide-and-seek, to show how much they care for each other. As he crosses a bridge, the traveller thinks how much he would like one day to travel down the river in a boat from Juromenha in its upper reaches as far as its estuary. Perhaps the idea will remain no more than that, perhaps one day he will suddenly decide to launch himself on the adventure. He has a mental image of the Pulo do Lobo, hears the water gushing through the rocks, the possibility of death. From now on, the traveller will look at himself with a slightly sceptical, mocking air: come on, let's see if you're up to it.

Soon he comes across a sign pointing off to Baleizão. There does not seem anything special about it, but the traveller mutters to himself: “Ah, Baleizão, Baleizão”, and sets off towards it. He does not intend to stop in the village, or to speak to anyone. He simply wants to pass through. Anyone seeing him would think: “Look, a tourist.” That could not be further from the truth. The traveller takes a deep breath in Baleizão, drives between two lines of houses, and on the way picks out a man's face, then a woman's, and if when he emerges on the far side of the village there is no sign of any transformation in him, that is because when he has to, a man can hide almost anything.

He is soon in Beja. Built on its hill (and in these flat lands, to call something a hill does not mean anything very grandiose) the ancient Roman Pax Julia does not seem so steeped in time. It is true that there are remains from Roman times, and others from before and afterwards, like the Visigoth ruins, but the layout of the town, the way things have been torn down or built up, the neglect and yet again sheer ignorance, make it seem at first sight no different from others with little or no history. One has to dig for it: the castle, the church of Santa María, the church of the Misericordia, the museum all bear traces of the passage of history through Pax Julia (which the Arabs, who had no Latin, called Baju, which then became Baja, and finally Beja).

(…)
To continue in the same vein, the traveller would say that the castle left him cold as well. But he must admit that the magnificent keep is worthy of praise. If he sang praises in Estremoz, all the more reason to do so here. Of all the rooms inside, the traveller would take with him, if he could, the main hall, with its vaulted ceiling painted with stars. This clearly shows that Christian architects understood that a style and a technique which had originated with the Moors and had deep cultural roots in the region could still be used successfully. Which just shows how crazy it was to ignore them later.

For Pax Julia to end up as Beja, after defeating the Moors for pronunciation, is one thing. But for an abattoir to end up as a church is something else altogether. Then again, necessity always triumphs in the end. Whereas in Évora the Roman temple became an abattoir, here in Beja the building was thought to be too beautiful to leave to the butchers, and on the same spot where they sacrificed cattle to the appetites of the body, they decided to construct a place where the sacrifice of the Lamb of God could be celebrated for the salvation of the soul. The paths trodden by men are only complicated for the salvation of the soul. The paths trodden by men are only complicated at first sight. When we look more closely, we can see traces of earlier feet, analogies, contradictions that have been resolved or may be resolved at some future date, places where suddenly languages are spoken in common and become universal. The columns of the Misericordia church show a perfect adaptation (understood in the sense of a collective local appropriation) of the Renaissance architectural style seen as being compatible with earlier regional styles.

The traveller would like to see the Visigoth capitals in the church of St Amaro, but on this occasion could not face the search for the miraculous key. Perhaps he was wrong. It might have been easy to find, but if he has had problems even in the smallest village, what might it be like in a town of this size, busy with its own concerns. So the traveller chose the safer option of going to see the museum.

The museum in Beja is regional and is right to claim nothing more than that. Its chief merit is that all its exhibits are local or were dug up in the region, which makes them doubly from here. The museum occupies what used to be the Convento da Nossa Senhora da Conceição, or to be more precise, all that is left of it: the church, the cloister and the chapterhouse. This is where Mariana Alcoforado breathed the sighs of her carnal passion. She was perfectly right to do so: no-one should expect to shut up a woman within the four walls of a convent to moulder away and not have her rebel. But what the traveller doubts is her famous love letters: can they really be written by a Portuguese hand, and from a convent? They show a command of sophisticated rhetoric that seems beyond the reach of a girl born in these harsh lands, however well-off her family may have been in spiritual or worldly possessions. Be that as it may, the great love that Mariana Alcoforado felt - if she really was the author of the famous Portuguese letters - did not shorten her life in any way: eighty-three years she spent in this vale of tears, more than sixty of them in this convent. If we compare that to the average lifespan of people in her time, we can see what a headstart she got in paradise.

The traveller does not intend to give a description of the museum. He wishes simply to mention those exhibits that stayed in his mind (and there are many reasons, not all of them objective, for why something stays in our mind), for example the silver litters to carry the two St Johns - the Baptist and the Evangelist - heavy enough to wear out two sets of bearers. He detects a rivalry between the two saints to see which could be the richer and more popular, which could attract more prayers. These litters did not exist in the time of Mariana, so the traveller cannot imagine the passionate sister inventing celestial messages to advance her earthly loves, but he has no doubt that other nuns, on seeing these rich and sensual objects, called for divine protection as soon as the saints stepped up to their sumptuous thrones.

The chapterhouse is well proportioned, has an exquisitely painted ceiling, and a collection of decorative tiles equalled only by that in Sintra. Some are Moorish ones from Seville, a sort of Gothic brocade; others, also from Seville, are carpet tiles; still others show the influence of Valencia and are smooth, with blues and greens of a coppery hue. What is especially note-worthy is the way that all these different styles sit harmoniously together in this one room, although the patterns, the colours used, and the age they were made in - the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries - are so varied. The overall effect of their design is one of complete unity. The traveller, who sometimes finds it hard to match his shirt and trousers, feels humble faced with this lesson in fusion.

Next he goes to look at the paintings, which are suprisingly good and very little known. The one exception to this is of course the St Vincent by the Master of Sardoal or his school. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a masterpiece which any foreign museum would put on a pedestal of fame. We here in Portugal are so spoilt for choice, and spend all our time quaffing champagne, that we have no time for such things. Beja meanwhile keeps the secret of its St Vincent, and a rich secret it is. There are many more things the traveller could mention, but he will merely point out the Ribera paintings: the St Barbara, the wonderfully powerful Christ by Arellano, the impressive “Flagellation” and above all, though not so much for its artistic merit as for the involuntary humour it displays, the “Birth of St John the Baptist”. The familiarity with which the scene is treated, the huddle of people and angels crowding round the newborn baby, while in the background, still in her bed, St Anne is busy drawing up the child's birth certificate, all make the traveller smile with pure delight. It gives him excellent provisions for the next stage of his journey.

But the itinerary he is following seems like that of someone lost. From Pulo do Lobo to Beja he was heading northwest, and now he is aiming due north, to visit first of all Vidigueira and then Portel. Yet he finds whatever he is looking for, and if he asks for directions, always learns how to get there; so he is a lost person who has managed to find himself.

Vidigueira means Vasco da Gama and white wine, with apologies to all those purists who find this linking of history and wine inadmissible. The Admiral of the Indies' bones have been taken to Belém in Lisbon. All that is left from his time is the Clock Tower, where even today one can hear the bronze bell he had cast, four years before his death in the distant land of Cochin, the white wine is still going strong, and is sure to outlast the traveller.

North from the top of the Mendro hills is the district of Évora. Portel is a few kilometres further on. Its narrow twisting streets are charming, with their wrought-iron balconies. It also has some Gothic and Manueline portals, and a few ancient buildings, like the Açougues, with its coat of arms, and the church of the Misericórdia where in addition to the opulent platform for the Easter Week processions, there is a wooden sculpture of Christ from the fifteenth century that is a good example of Gothic carving. The traveller went up to the castle to see its stones and the view of the world to be had from there. He was fully rewarded by the views: the battlements of the keep look out over the land and it seems as if by stretching out your arm you could touch the horizon. That is the characteristic of the Alentejo: it hides nothing, but immediately shows all it has to offer. The castle is octagonal in shape, encircled by two rows of walls: some of its round towers date back to the thirteenth century and the days of Dom Manuel I. There are traces of a palace belonging to the Dukes of Braganza, and of a chapel, though it takes a trained eye to find them. Those who do know about these things recognise the hand of Francisco de Arruda, who was the architect and overseer of the building of the walls.

(…)
Now it's time for the traveller to complete the loop he began in Beja. He is headed for Alvito, but beforehand wants to pay a visit to the Quinta da Água de Peixes, a fourteenth-century palace modified in the early years of the reign of Dom Manuel I by Moorish or Jewish craftsmen possibly expelled from Spain after the conquest of Granada. The entrance porch is very beautiful, supported on fine stone columns, and with a rectangular roof whose rear side is less sloping than the others, which introduces a pleasant sense of asymmetry. The corner balcony has delicate Moorish ornamentation which makes the traveller sigh with content.

Alvito was preparing for a fiesta. There was no-one in the streets, but a loudspeaker was booming out to the four winds a song with a Spanish title sung in English by a pair of Swedish women. Down below the town is the castle, or fortified manor house, of a kind unusual in Portugal - round corner towers, tall windowless walls. For some reason, its gates were shut. The traveller went on to the main square, drank some tepid water from the fountain which only increased his thirst but, lucky man that he is, was soon refreshed because as he entered a nearby street, he looked up and saw its sign: Rua das Manhãs. Oh, blessed land of Alvito, which on a street corner like this can pay homage to all the mornings of the world and of men, take good care that no night falls on you other than the natural one! The traveller is beside himself with joy. And since joy never comes unaccompanied, not only did he have the hilarious experience of mistaking a tax office for a chapel, but then stumbled upon the parish church, which must have been the most wide open and welcoming he has ever seen, its three doors letting in vast swathes of light - which only goes to show, the traveller thinks, that there is no mystery in religion, or if there is, it is not what it is commonly imagined to be. Inside, the traveller found the same octagonal columns as in Viana do Alentejo, and some interesting seventeenth-century tiles showing scenes from the Bible.

The same road leads through Vila Ruiva and Vila Alva to Vila de Frades, where Fialho de Almeida was born. But the artistic jewel here is the Roman villa at São Cucufate, a few kilometres further on in the middle of olive groves and grassy hillocks. A tiny signpost points the way down a dirt track: that must be it. The site is so hidden, the atmosphere so calm, that the traveller feels he is discovering an unknown world. It does not take long to reach the villa. The ruins are enormous. They are spread over a considerable distance, and the main structure, which has several floors supported on sturdy brick arches, shows what an important place this must have been. Excavations are being carried out, obviously with great scientific care. (…)»