The vast and burning lands of Alentejo
Where the Eagles Rest

«The traveller is on the road to Montemor-o-Novo. In Alcácer do Sal he visited the churches of Our Lord of the Martyrs, built in the thirteenth century by the Order of Santiago, and of St Mary, within the castle walls. That's the one belonging to the martyrs, with its powerful buttresses, an architectural piece of general merit of which much more could be said. Among the items of greatest note are the chapel dedicated to St Bartholomew and a second Gothic one, where the tomb of the order's first Commander is displayed. There above it, the church of St Mary is looked after by an extremely old lady, though less deaf than she appears, with an ironic twinkle in her eyes which swiftly hardens as she slyly inspects the tip she quickly slips into her pinafore. But her complaints have a ring of authenticity: the church is in a sad state of neglect, its statues removed, even the altar cloths vanished never to return, and she thinks the priest, perhaps in order not to have to climb back up the steep slope, prefers his ministry down on the plains and has taken all the prized items there with him. Fortunately, it was unfeasible for him to loot or carry off the porches so well suited to the primitive architecture of the building, still less its beautiful Romanesque capitals. The traveller still has his doubts whether such ancient items would excite the interest of a modern cleric.

Higher up lie the ruins of a convent. The lattice is opened by an extremely young woman, one given to disinterested gestures and prompt responses, begging pardon for being so ill-informed. Tirelessly she takes the traveller to the top of the highest walls, simply to show him the countryside, with the Sado curving broadly through the lush green rice paddies. In addition she has a complaint of her own: the blue-and-white tiles that once covered the parish church from top to bottom have been removed. “So where are they now?” the traveller asks. The woman replies that someone told her the panels could now be found in Batalha parish church, at least all that would fit in there, and that the rest were stored in boxes somewhere or other. The traveller trawls his memory but his memory won't let itself be trawled. He needs to return to Batalha to clarify the situation, Meanwhile, its important to do justice to this Castelo de Alcácer [Castle of the Fort]: in earlier days it must have had considerable scope, capable of putting the fear of God into anyone, and only declaring itself open to the Portuguese populace under the reign of Afonso II.

The traveller takes a roundabout route through the freshest of fields which the sun seems never to reach, crossing the River Sitimos (an enigmatic name only gradually falling into oblivion); anyone looking at it would assume that it runs direct to the South, leaving behind the lands of the high Alentejo. But this proves to be merely a diversion. In Torrão, having gone into the parish church to view the tile-covered walls and thank the person who, in opening the door to him, had to break off eating lunch, he resumed the road going north towards Alcáçovas, a region of the country yet to receive the honour due for its discovery of the secret of how to protect works of art, at least those still preserved in churches - something that may not be honour enough but at least has to be worth something. A real Columbus' egg, this one: place the church alongside the barracks of the Republican Guard (or the other way around); place the key in the custody of the person in charge; then whoever wishes to visit the liturgical treasures of Alcáçovas has to surrender their identity card, and continue under escort, to attend the ceremony of drawing back the bolts. Surely anyone turning up there with evil intent would be deterred, finding their nervesunable to withstand its wealth of ceremonial.

(...)
The traveller begins by visiting the castle at Montemor-o-Novo which, at a distance and viewed from the east, looks a solid and intact construction but, once behind the outer walls and the eastern turrets, turns out to be nothing but ruins. And there's no easy access to what as yet remains. The traveller was obliged to see the Moorish abattoir with its elegant cupola at close quarters. Everything was in a state of disintegration. Time has caused close quarters. Everything was in a state of disintegration. Time has caused the stones to come unstuck and tumble down, there's been no lack of interested parties to gather them up and cart them away under their own steam. The Manueline porch of the old church of Santa María do Bispo still stands, its lattice gate made out of wire-netting like a rabbit hutch. The remains of the Alcaides palace amounts to no more than some worm-riddled turrets and shutter-boarding, the church of St John is nothing but a pile of stones. This journey has had its fair share of desolate spectacles, but this outdoes them all. The traveller hoped to win his prize by visiting the monastery of Saudação (Salvation), but entry was denied him. Patience. He sought comfort in St Anthony's monastery, gazing at the magnificent polychrome tiles coating the church from top to bottom. Adaptations to the old cells have resulted in a museum dedicated to bullfighting. Each to their own. The traveller encountered his in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Visitation, devised as a bucolic variation in a Manueline-Moorish style, resolving into little cylindrical towers and wide whitewashed surfaces. The façade dates from the eighteenth century, yet fails to cover up all traces of the original. Inside, the sight of its time-honoured tiles and the ribs of the vaulting raise the spirits. In the entrance a huge wooden arch contains grain gathered in for the harvest festival. The traveller peered in: a few scant handfuls of cereal, hidden in the depths to serve by way of encouragement, or perhaps merely the leftovers of the last Mass collection.

Straight on to Arraiolos, a region of tapestry-weavers, and to Sempre Noiva where the traveller would have been bound to end up whether or not he went out of his way to Gafanhoeira. Here there lives a troubadour poet in the satirical tradition, a specialist in ten-line compositions on grotesque themes, for long a wandering songster rejoicing in the marvellous name of Bernardino Barco Recharto. Lack of time prevents the traveller from stopping and visiting him, but he guesses that within the hour he'll regret his decision. It's late, after all. He promises himself to follow the impulses of his heart more closely henceforth, if reason could only be sufficiently benevolent not to contradict his heart with irrefutable rationalisations.

Arraiolos suprises the traveller. He's well aware that people in the Alentejo do not laugh all that easily but there's a considerable gap between the gravity assumed with a first step beyond the cradle and closed expressions like these, rarely encountered on a daily basis. Evils must have been committed and on a grand scale. The traveller pauses in a small square in order to orientate himself, and enquires the way to the Sempre Noiva and the Convento dos Lois. An exceedingly wrinkled and ancient old man, whose soft eyelids expose their pink and sticky underneath, offers directions.

(...)
The Sempre Noiva country house, on the way to Évora, has an attractive name [“Forever New”]. It would be a fine work of architecture, were it not so over-decorated with inauthentic additions.

The Night the World Began

The traveller has reached Évora. Here he finds the famous Giraldo Square with its leaping cavalier or cavalier leaper who, in order to obtain pardon from Afonso Henriques for his crimes and misdemeanours, decided to conquer Évora. He obtained it through skilful dexterity and the Moorish innocence which had left only an old man and his daughter on guard in their fortress who, if the truth were told, weren't on guard at all, but rather were sound asleep when old Sem Pavor beheaded them in a fit of piety.

(...) The apostles on the outside of the Cathedral are magnificent: but are they more or less magnificent than those on the portals of Batalha? Futile questions, a waste of time. But in Évora, it's true, there's an atmosphere impossible to find anywhere else. Évora has definitely History's continual presence on its streets and squares, in every stone or shadow. Évora has succeeded absolutely in defending the past without doing so at the expense of the present. With this happy pronouncement, the traveller feels liberated from other overall judgments, and goes into the Cathedral.

More spacious churches may exist, even taller and more sumptuous ones. Few have this degree of secluded gravity. Mother church to those in Lisbon and Oporto, it also outdoes them in its own particular individuality and a subtle difference in tone. With every voice stilled, silenced the organs on either side, if you muffle your steps you can hear its deep sonority, nothing less than the vibration of columns and arches, of the infinite geometry created by the alignment of its stone. A religious space, Évora Cathedral is also an entirely human space: the destiny of these stones was dictated by intelligence, this it was that selected them from the ground, giving them shape and feeling, this it was which asked and defined solutions onto a diagram drawn on paper. It's intelligence which raises up the lantern-tower, harmonising the guidelines of the triforium, and composing its sheaves of columns. It could be said that the traveller praises Évora Cathedral to excess, singing praises that could be as valid, or more so, elsewhere as here. So be it. But the traveller, who has seen much already, has never come across stones so capable of fomenting an exaltation of spirit as these, so confident in the power of intelligence. You can keep Batalha, the Jeronomite Museum and Alcobaça in all its religious fervour. Nobody can deny that these are wonders, but Évora Cathedral, at first sight so impenetrable and severe, received the traveller as if with open arms, and if his first response is an emotional one, the second has to be dialectical.

(...)
The traveller leaves in search of the cool shadows around the fringes of the Marquês de Marialva Lake, goes up the short ramp, and having surveyed, with requisite delicacy, the Temple to Diana (who isn't and never was Diana, its name being due to the inventive Father Fialho) he heads for the museum. He goes there thoughtfully, as ever befits a traveller, contemplating the fortunes of certain human constructions: they relish their period of splendour, then decay and perish, in a few instances to be rescued at the very last minute. So it was with this Roman temple: destroyed in the fifth century by northern barbarians who arrived in the peninsula, it served, in the Middle Ages, as the castle strongroom and so it remains, its parallel columns lodged into a solid wall, before ending up as the town's main abattoir. In the 1383 revolution it was occupied by labourers in insurrection against supporters of Queen Leonor Teles, and from the battlemented terrace it once boasted they attacked the Castle by furing flurries of arrows until the point of surrender was reached. Thus is it recorded in the honourable words of Fernão Lopes. It was only in 1871 that the Roman temple recovered its looks, as first conceived and as far as was possible. But the traveller still goes on his way... (...)»