A light mist seems to appear at the right instant we try to peek into the future. Whatever comes next to both of us, we already have a beautiful part of our lives recorded in a book. That it prevails in time like the inscriptions that the Gallaeci engraved on the brave granite of the mountains, it is our greatest desire. But, even if that turns out untrue, at least it must prevail the love that the people from alto-minho feels about itself. That bright and rightly shared joy which emanates from the eyes of those who walk at the “romarias”. Specially for them and to all who accompanied us during this year of “pilgrimage”, our most heartfelt thank you.

I recall the days when we moved to a “romaria” and it would give nothing of what the photographer was looking for. Not even a lousy picture to which it would be worth looking at a second time. Garbage, he said. But after we lived again moments through conversation, remembering people, actors on a stage with an immense dome of awnings and paliums of damask, and we would smile, burst in laughter, or even give a tenderly comment on that sympathetic old lady or on that beautiful girl who smiled at us. After all, it had been worthwhile. The truth (we say this without hesitation and in the simplest manner) is that <i> all </ i> is worth in a festival at Alto Minho…

At the procession we remain silent. The faith passes by in a thick column, murmuring prayers, sometimes singing, rockets mingle with dragged and almost rhythmical steps. The color appears only in the “anjinhos”*, in the damask cloths of the canopy and in the platforms where the saints go. Even the amusements are required to stop. Sometimes the brass band is allowed to close with a march. About everything else falls into an unnecessary blackness of respect.

* (literally “little angels”, children dressed as saints)

So little time has passed since I saw my grandmother washing clothes in a pond, breaking the morning ice that had formed with a stick and dipping her wrinkled and hard work worn hands in that impossible water. Or my mother who, at three years old, had to hold the noose of the cow to avoid her running through the meadows of grass, sometimes soggy. It is in their childhood that I think whenever I see a girl on a pilgrimage. In the recent history we have traveled since the childhood of my grandmother and my mother till these little girls with sweet smile. So much had to be endured before a new Minho was formed for them.

I remember the times that “we went to the festival”… The smile of my parents, the candies, the rockets blasting in the sky, the rides in the carousels… The joy of being a child in a day of pilgrimage makes us Minho’s natives. And this is what identifies us when we return there as adults, albeit with totally different eyes. Stepping on the green carpets of  the hills we learn to love the pilgrimages, even if growing up would turn us into another person and faith does’t mean nothing but something we just look at with mere curiosity.

Under the awnings fits all Minho. Fits the shared stories, the bowls of wine, the pig meat and cod, the farming labours and the crops, the fair and the business, the carousel, the fleeting happiness of a concertina … The only thing that doesn’t fit in is sadness, beneath the awnings, that’s never shared. Under the awnings, we save it for us. Outside the awning, there’s a vain hope in the unseen.

«Ó luas negras, cujo luar é tudo, tudo
Quanto ha de branco: véus de noivas, cal
Da ermida, velas do hiate, sol de Portugal,
Linho de fiar, leite de nossas mães, mãos juntas
Que têm erguidas entre cyrios, as defuntas!»

António Nobre (1867-1900), excerpto do poema A Vida, in «Só», Paris, Léon Vanier Éd., 1892.

Another white chapel up there… Always on the top, rarely beside a flat and accessible road. Once there, it springs an eagerness to talk with everyone, explaining to them the centuries and the men, to love with ideas, with no disrespect. I just stay put and stare. I remember when my mother bought me António Nobre and I read it under an old olive tree in the churchyard of a Baroque chapel in my village, if I did not know it so well, I would swear this one is the same. Something in Portugal makes me feel that all the chapels are just copies of a primary matrix, designed in limewash on a white sheet of paper.

«Oh dark moons, who’s moonlight is all, all
There is of white: bridal veils, limewash
Of the Chapel, yacht sails, sun of Portugal,
Flax for spinning, milk from our mothers, hands worshiping
Raised among tapers by defunct ladies!»

António Nobre (1867-1900), freely translated excerpt from the poem A Vida, in «Só», Paris, Léon Vanier Éd., 1892.

Alto Minho reserves for viagra animals a special value, an ashamed tribute to thousands of years of help, gift and sacrifice. This value can never be settled and on days of pilgrimage or fair, they are paid a shy tribute, often in the form of a bath and hair scrubbing, a colorful ribbon or an old and lavishly ornated yoke who already belonged to the great-grandparents.

Alto Minho was born from granite and with it was built. He is sovereign, governing our lives, wherever we look, there he is, smiling in the sun. In the rain, always introduces himself angry and gray, with an ugly face. We sought him when we reflect, sitting or standing, when we cry too, and with him we protect ourselves inside our homes. To it we shall return, finally, when it’s all over…

Something fast, sibilant, breaks the sky and bursts the eardrums of the ones who stand below, dropping a cane that falls away, flying over the vineyards and landing, picketing, in a cornfield. A scare, a man with his head in the air unleashing an ancient curse and a little cry of girl who stoops. It must be a solemn moment or a joyful one. Whatever it is, it is ephemeral, and the rocket indicates it. In the end, if the festivities were there in the village, my grandmother would send me fetch ‘the canes’; handy, at least, to guide the beans and tomatoes when the leafs blossomed.