Holy Thursday in Seven Cities, Azores

The volcano crater of Sete Cidades, with its double lagoon: the Green Lagoon in the foreground, and the Blue Lagoon in the background. Seen from the Cerrado das Freiras.

We are in the almost most westerly parish of Europe. This is due to São José, in the freguesía of Fajã Grande, in the Isla de Flores of the Azores – of course, if we accept beforehand that these islands belong to Europe, despite sitting on the American plate. But where we are now is the westernmost parish of the Island of San Miguel, halfway between the Finis Terrae of the old continent and the coast of Newfoundland. Exactly, in the front of the church of San Nicolás, erected in the nineteenth century, in a particularly beautiful volcanic crater that bears the crowded-sounding name of Sete Cidades. Even though there are no cities here, and even of people there are very few. The name comes from the legendary Isla de las Siete Ciudades, the Island of the Seven Cities, never found, but very much alive in the literature and dreams of the cartographers, sailors and explorers of the Atlantic, described for centures in endless variations.


Any visit to these islands, with the omnipresent sea and harsh geographical conditions, evokes the world of the whales and whale hunters. Among the men and women who gathered on this Holy Thursday in the church of San Nicolás, few would not have had a family member who earned their bread hunting whales. Surely, too, most have had family members who emigrated to America. The two things used to go together. They called it “taking the leap”: to go out at night, clandestinely, on an American whaler, to have a job, and above all, to avoid the obligatory recruitment for military service. Under cover of darkness, when they were aware that an American whaling ship was nearby, the men who wanted a new life would light a bonfire on the rocks of the coast, and at this signal the captain sent a boat to enroll them. The presence of the Azorean whalers (or, as they were known in Nantucket and New Bedford, the men of the Western Islands) is recorded even in Moby Dick.


José Pecheco, Luís Silva: Canção de despedida (Farewell song). From the album Chants des baleiniers portugais de Faial, Açores (Songs of the whalers of Faial, Azores, 1958)

Whale hunting put roots in the islands from 1756 on, when the first whaling boat from New England circumnavigated the Azores. By 1880, a third of the 3.896 whalers of the New Bedford fleet were Azorean. At that time, the islanders themselves were developing a fleet and a local industry. It was relatively weak, almost artisanal, because they never had enough capital to compete with the American vessels. Only for a few years, beginning with 1951, did local whaling reach a significant industrial level (751 sperm whales and 16,000 barrels of oil in the same year), but it was very ephemeral: In 1957, with the destructive eruption of the Vulcão dos Capelinhos and the subsequent massive emigration, it went into rapid decline until its total cessation on August 21, 1987, when a group of men hunted the last sperm whale, a 15-meter leviathan, and processed it on the Isla de Pico. We’ll talk about it in a future post. Today there are very few old whalers, usually men of few words, testimonies to a way of life that, like so many others, will never come back.

Jueves Santo en Sete Cidades, Azores

Caldera volcánica de Sete Cidades, con su laguna doble: la Laguna Verde, más cerca, y la Laguna Azul al fondo. Vista desde el Cerrado das Freiras.

Por poco no estamos en la parroquia más occidental de Europa. Este título le correspondería a la de São José en la freguesía de Fajã Grande, en la azoriana Isla de Flores  —si aceptamos antes, claro está, que esta isla es Europa a pesar de asentarse sobre la placa americana—. Pero donde sí estamos ahora es en la parroquia más occidental de la Isla de San Miguel, es decir, a medio camino desde el Finis Terrae del viejo continente a las costas de Terranova. Exactamente ante la iglesia de San Nicolás, erigida el siglo XIX en una hoya volcánica especialmente hermosa que ostenta el populoso nombre de Sete Cidades. Aunque ciudades propiamente dichas aquí no hay ninguna; y gente, poca. El nombre le viene de la legendaria Isla de las Siete Ciudades, nunca encontrada pero viva en la literatura y las ensoñaciones de cartógrafos, marineros y exploradores del Atlántico, y contada a lo largo de los siglos con infinitas variantes.


Cualquier visita a estas islas, con el mar omnipresente y la dureza de las condiciones geográficas, pone sin remedio en nuestra imaginación el mundo de las ballenas y de los balleneros. Entre los hombres y mujeres que se congregaban este Jueves Santo en la iglesia de San Nicolás, pocos debía haber que no tuvieran un familiar que hubiera vivido de la caza de ballenas y cachalotes. Seguramente también la mayoría habrán tenido familiares que emigraron a América. Las dos cosas solían ir unidas, y llamaban «dar el salto» a subirse de noche, clandestinamente, a un ballenero norteamericano para tener trabajo y, sobre todo, por evitar el reclutamiento obligatorio para el servicio militar. Ayudados por la oscuridad, cuando sabían que algún barco ballenero americano estaba cerca, los hombres que deseaban una vida nueva encendían una hoguera en las rocas de la costa y a esta señal el capitán del barco botaba una chalupa para enrolarlos. Hasta en Moby Dick se recoge la presencia de balleneros azorianos (o, como se conocían en Nantucket y New Bedford, hombres de las Western Islands).


José Pecheco, Luís Silva: Canção de despedida. Del album Chants des baleiniers portugais de Faial, Açores (Canciones de los balleneros portuguese de Faial, Azores, 1958)

Fue a partir de 1756, al avistarse la primera embarcación ballenera de Nueva Inglaterra rondando las Azores, cuando la caza se hizo presente en las islas. En 1880, un tercio de los 3.896 balleneros de la flota de New Bedford eran azorianos. También los propios isleños fueron desde entonces desarrollando una flota y una industria local. Relativamente débil, casi artesanal, porque nunca llegó allí capital suficiente como para competir con las embarcaciones de alta mar americanas. Solo durante unos pocos años, a partir de 1951, la caza de ballenas alcanzó un nivel industrial significativo (751 cachalotes y 16.000 barriles de aceite en ese mismo año, por ejemplo) pero fue muy efímero: en 1957, con la erupción destructora del Vulcão dos Capelinhos y la subsiguiente emigración masiva, empezó un rápido declive hasta el cese total el 21 de agosto de 1987. Ese día, un grupo de amigos cazó el último cachalote, un leviatán de 15 metros descuartizado en la Isla de Pico. Hablaremos de ello en una próxima entrada. Quedan ya muy pocos viejos balleneros, normalmente hombres de escasas palabras, testimonios de una forma de vida que, como tantas otras, es imposible que vuelva.

As long as the world is running

“In the neurotic, rushed Europe, Portugal remained a corner of attraction and charm. […] The humanism of the Portuguese […] lives together in harmony with their Christian tradition and tolerance. In general, the elegance of their way of thinking and expressing themselves – regardless of social class –, which can be well described only with the word “generous”, clearly highlights this fortunate difference to the mutinous and brutal societies of other countries.”

Émile Servan-Schreiber, 1938

Alcobaça, January 2015

Katia Guerrero: Até ao fim

These Portuguese kings were quite strange figures. How else could it be, if even the first one was Hungarian. For example, they were capable of such unusual things at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, like reading, and one of them went even further. Don Dinis learned to write, which was held in quite low esteem in the period. He wrote wonderful chivalry and love songs, cantigas in ancient Portuguese, he translated from other languages, and he composed the gesta of the deds of his grandfather, Alfonso el Sabio, the wise king of Castile. Alfonso was also a strange figure. Before and together with Rudolf von Hapsburg he was also King of Germany, and he started to standardize the Castilian dialect.

And Don Dinis’ grandson, one of our story’s heroes, Pedro, loved. Loved and still loves – the present tense is no mistake, as you will soon understand – a woman, like no one else in this world, and this love prompted him to things, elevated him so high and dropped him so low, like perhaps no one else in this world. The true story of this love, as if it were a Shakespeare play, at once shows the wonders, goodness and dark depths of the human heart, and is still present in the Portuguese spirit, metaphors and daily speech.



The spring sky of Portugal is wonderfully blue. It could not be any different in 1340, when a new, carefully planned dynastic marriage was prepared between Pedro, the Crown Prince of Portugal, and the Castilian Princess Constança. The first marriage of the Crown Prince was not successful. In lack of a much-anticipated successor, Pedro divorced his wife, the Castilian and Aragonese Princess Branca. The new election, Princess Constança seemed a perfect party from every personal and political aspect.

In the delegation there was also Inês de Castro, a Castilian noble maid of honor, who according to contemporary memoirs was a delightfully beautiful, attractive and nice person, so the bright blue sky did not have to help too much so the Crown Prince fall in crazy love with her, and his feelings be reciprocated. The marriage with Constança was made in August. Inês also remained at the court.

Inês de Castro. The Spanish women who reigned after her death, 1944. Directed by Leitão de Barros. Starring Alicia Palacios, Antonio Vilar and María Pradera

At that time the institution of royal and princely lovers was common, and in later ages it was even a honor to be the king’s concubine. It was, however, quite uncommon that two people loved each other so much, to the amazement, jealousy, envy and rage of their environment. King Alfonso soon chased Inês from the court, but the couple’s relationship was not interrupted.

In 1345 Ferdinand, the later Don Fernando was born, and Princess Constança died quite young, at the age of twenty-five or thirty. Pedro had his sweetheart brought back. He placed her in the Santa Clara convent of Coimbra, and they lived together quite openly and happily. They had three sons and a daughter. In 1345 he probably also married her in secret.

Alcobaça, January 2015

Their this-worldly happiness, however, could not be fulfilled. Countless variations can be read as to what intensified the hatred against the couple, from the strengthening of the Castilian influence to the overturning of the order of succession to the throne. I myself think that hatred was the main motor: the court could not bear the harmony of two happy persons. This hatred brought its fruit. Don Alfonso accepted the – false – accusation of high treason against Inês, and sentenced her to death. Pedro, who was well aware of the extent of hatred, quite inexplicably did not take any precaution, even after he was warned of the danger. Thus on 7 January 1355, today six hundred sixty-one year ago, when Pedro went to hunting, it was easy to three “noble” lords, Pêro Coelho, Álvaro Gonçalves and Diogo Lopes Pacheco to kidnap the twenty-five or thirty-year-old Inês, and to murder her in Coimbra, the Garden of Tears, in the presence of Don Alfonso.

Eugénie Servières: Inês de Castro begs for mercy at the feet of King Alfonso, 1822

Karl Briullov: Death of Inês de Castro, 1834

As to what Pedro must have felt at the news, is apparent from his subsequent deeds. He almost caused a civil war against his father, and only by the intervention of the Archbishop of Braga he reconciled with the probably terminally ill Don Alfonso, who died in 1357. Don Pedro took the throne, and from then on we can recognize in every his deed the vengeance of a man who almost lost his mind of pain.

The three murderers sensed the danger in time, and fled to Castile. Pedro, however, could reach that in 1361 the Castilian monarch released him two of them, Coelho and Gonçalves. A terrible fate awaited them.

Detail from the film Inês de Castro, 1944. Directed by Leitão de Barros

The king announced his secret marriage with Inês, and subsequently declared her Queen of Portugal. He had her corpse digged out, dressed her in royal regalia, and had her sat on the throne.

Detail from the film Inês de Castro, 1944. Directed by Leitão de Barros.
In the role of Don Pedro, Antonio Vilar

The murderers had to appear before the skeleton, bend knee, and kiss her hands. Then Pedro made them bring to Porto, where he had their hearts publicly torn out.

Pierre-Charles Comte, The coronation of the dead Inês de Castro, 1849

During his reign, Pedro took care of his people, and laid the foundation of all what a few years later meant the centuries old maritime and world power of Portugal. However, he compensated the horror with other horrors, cruelties, violations of right and violence, and according to the memoirs, he often found refuge in wild parties and roistering.

And yet, at the end of his ruined this-worldly life, he did two things that cannot be told without emotion. The third, escaped killer, Diogo Lopes Pacheco asked for mercy. He must have been tortured by saúdade, which chases away those living in Portugal, and calls back those living far of their homeland. And Pedro pardoned him. In 1365 Diogo Lopes was allowed to return to Portugal. He lived thirty more years, surviving all the actors of this story. He will be a diplomat in the service of Don Fernando, he intervenes again in the king’s marriage, he has to emigrate again, he is pardoned again, again he can return…

Tomb of Inês de Castro, Alcobaça

For the Portuguese, it is natural, that the body will rise again. You cannot watch without emotion in the vaults, next to the coffins those practical or beloved everyday objects, which were important to the deceased, and which he or she will certainly need at the resurrection. Pedro, at the age of only 47, sensing the end of his earthly life, ordered his final resting place to be in the Monastery of Alcobaça, which had been under construction since 1178. He wanted to rest in front of his sweetheart, “as long as the world is running”, so at the resurrection it should be her, Inês de Castro, whom he glimpses the first.




His will was fulfilled, and the two sarcophagi have stood against each other motionless for about six hundred fifty years, as one of the most important monuments of the country, where here has been no serious war for about a thousand years, and where millions and millions of material and spiritual monuments connect the living present with the living past. As long as the world is running.

In January I was for the first time in the monastery, already knowing the story of the couple. The sun was beautifully shining, the sky was incredibly deep blue, and the first flowers were blossoming.

The Mass was still being celebrated in the monastery, so we had to wait an hour before we could go close to the two sarcophagi behind the main altar. Everything came alive, and I immediately understood and felt how Pedro loved and still loves this woman. The barriers did not let me in reality, but in thought I caressed the two sarcophagi. Let it be so: the two coffins will open, and the happy couple will see each other again, for they have incessantly loved each other ever since – as long as the world is running…



Amalia Rodrigues: April

Grassroots

“MY BELOVED HOMELAND.” I need volunteers for the establishment of this party (center-left). Phone.
(Lisbon, yesterday)

To establish a party, you have to start somewhere. Specifically, at the very beginning.

Azulejo

“Azulejo (Portuguese: [ɐzuˈleʒu], Spanish: [aθuˈlexo], from the Arabic word zellige زليج) is a form of Spanish and Portuguese painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework. Azulejos are found on the interior and exterior of churches, palaces, ordinary houses, schools, and nowadays, restaurants, bars and even railways or subway stations.”



Amina Alaoui: Fado menor

L-Po

There are two points in Europe, when conjoined with a mild arc, to the south of which we see the places of Latin culture. The end closer to us, Lemberg, is already well known to the readers of río Wang, although since 1939 does not fit any more to the abbreviation Polonia. But about the other end, Lisbon, the capital of Portugal little has been said so far.

Nevertheless, it is a place where I felt the same certainty as in Lemberg: I will come back, this wonderful place does not let me go. Although otherwise, when I leave a city, I always look back a little, because saying farewell is always sad – I begin to feel what the Portuguese express with the word soudade –, but now this did not happen. Here, I will come back.

What do the Portuguese give, what does this city give you? Everything to everyone, I think, but especially to me, what I need now.

The city

The first night, while walking, I felt that the houses were friendly and familiar. Well, of course. The same eyes, the same hearts, the same spirit designed these buildings, as at the other end, in Lemberg. That Latin colorfulness, the narrow streets, balconies and terraces, which were born under the hands of Italian masters in 16th and 17th-century Lemberg, here create the same atmosphere from the 18th on. The milieu of Lisbon is very similar to that of Lemberg, as if the two cities still held each other’s hand – but they do not look in the same direction. The one peered through the mist of the ocean to the far away end of the world and the fabulous Eldorado, while the other often anxiously looked toward the darkening woods, wondering who would emerge from behind them. Lisbon is surely beloved by its residents.

Lemberg	Lisbon

And here, on this square I fell in love with this place.


The ocean

It’s different. Very different. In geography lesson we wrote: seven-tenths of the Earth is covered with water, but we do not feel and do not understand what it means. Here comes the moment for both. When you hear the water striking against the wall of the pier, or shaking the ferry port, you will understand it. And when you enter it, you will feel it, in a weird dichotomy: it caresses you like the warm-watered lake Balaton, but sometimes it also shows it strength: be careful, man, in a good part of the world I am the master.


Guitar music in the evening port. In the background, the sounds of the ocean

The people living here surely feel this. Columbus was laughed at by his contemporaries not for his view that the Earth is spherical –  as it is spread about with a dull anti-medievalism, although even Umberto Eco has already written its refutation – but for his audacity: how can be so reckless, to sail against this power with a wooden trough? Even the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator traveled only little, and his journeys – like those of all contemporary sailors – carefully followed the coastline.


The people

Friendly, relaxed people live here, this is the City of Sincere Smile. Beautiful people, women and men, the faces of many of them is painted in gold and coffee colors by vivacious blood and the sun. Their gazes bear witness to that world without haste, which probably all of us long for. With a smile and with cheerful gestures everything can be arranged. This can be seen in the look of the older lady who runs the restaurant, “where are you hurrying?” when I order without looking at the menu, and the same look becomes respectful, when I order vinho verde to the Portuguese-style steak made with white wine, with which the loud Russian and rigid German tourists drink beer. This is in the cheerful twinkling eyes and irresistible smiles of the Angolan girl, who was a pioneer in Cuba. In the mysteriously gleaming whiteness of the eyes of the Africans. And in the sad look of another girl, when I say goodbye to her before starting to the airport.

For us Hungarians, there is also a place where this feeling gives way to pleasant pride. This is the entrance of the Light Stadium of Benfica Sport Club.

Béla Guttman

Miklós Fehér

The language

The renowned early 20th-century Hungarian author Dezső Kosztolányi, the show pupil son of the school director, started to learn Portuguese on a summer holiday. He called it “a loose Latin”, and wrote about many funny and sweet surprises about this “flirt with the spirit of mankind”. To me, the sweetest thing in this “flirt” is the accents. Many words end in os, which must be usually pronounced as us, but it depends on your mood, what it becomes in the given moment. Proud contempt? Ús. Anger? Uss. Will you stop talking? Uzh. Don’t they pay attention to you? Úúús.

Kosztolányi imagined himself a tyrant who “motivated” him in learning Portuguese. If he could just have come here, he would have probably not spoken about a tyrant, but the smoothness and warmth of the air, the old houses of the city, the people. With them, you can learn Portuguese much sooner.

And we will not forget about this city. We will soon write about it again.