The good tomatoes season! Now I’m revisiting the lazy 2020 summer after the lock-down in Portugal, more on this in my blog. Beira Baixa, Portugal 🇵🇹, August 2020 #beirabaixa #portugal
Last year when the lock-down ended I went away from the city for a while, to my family’s small village at Beira Baixa. In those late May days the summer was starting to show himself between the mountains that surround my house, I ended up going back and forth a lot that summer, between the city and that small getaway place. Now I’m revisiting that lazy summer, more on this in my blog. Beira Baixa, Portugal 🇵🇹, May 2020 #beirabaixa #portugal
In the year that this pandemic has completed here in Portugal this was the closest I got from traveling. Excluding the weeks spent in my little getaway in Central Portugal (more on that soon) a lot of my world has been the streets around my house, specially in times like now with a tighter lockdown. The airport happens to be in walking distance from my house, one of the places I end up passing in walks around home, right I think I know all the streets and alleys nearby, and it’s getting more and more complicated to get creative to find new places… Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹, August 2020 #street #lisbon #portugal
The sun as set, and with it the little warmth that it can provide to a cold winter day; slowly people start moving inside, where a hot soup awaits, and the fire will eventually consume everything until it becomes a small pile of ash. Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, February 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
In all the more traditional Carnival festivities in Portugal, and many of the Winter Solstice ones that take place a few weeks earlier, the day ends with everyone surrounding a large fire (either a simple bonfire or even a figure being burned). Its meaning is simple and powerful: the burning of all the bad things enclosed in it, with added dimension from Christianity that a solemn period of moderation and discipline is around the corner.Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, February 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
Loose branches, old roots and all the burning stuff that could be found forms the big pile of wood that remains the whole day carnival day in a small plateau, overlooking the church and the houses of the small village, as well as the rolling hills nearby. Not sure if it’s on purpose or a coincidence… It’s at the place where all will come to an end, meant to be lit around dusk, as soon as the chaotic procession of masked men arrives. Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, March 2019 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
That big pile of wood has been there the whole day, even before the first masked men gather in the streets, waiting for the chaotic procession to go through the houses of the village, so that everyone eat, drink and sing, and in the end return to the place it started. At dusk. So it can be lit. Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, February 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
A test of courage, a old cleansing ritual, probably both but also a celebration of a village’s identity and some plain old fun. Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, March 2019 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide
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Jumping over the flames, one at a time! Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, February 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetide photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
Father and son, both wearing the “máscaro” red-hooded costumes, lighting the fire set in the middle of the square of Vila Boa, surrounded by the remaining people, while the remaining masked “máscaros” wait for the flames to rise.Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetidehttps://photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I0000Stc.SzvMdrg
A long, long time ago, the masked men at Vila Boa would to hide everything they were going to wear in Shrovetide Tuesday in the surrounding woods, so they could change clothes in a hidden place and return to the village already transformed, and thus be able to play all the tricks under total anonymity.Vila Boa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2018 #portugal #trasosmontes #entrudo #shrovetidehttps://photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I0000GIIUtJAwzug
That magical moment when the last rays of sunshine only light the trees and the stone walls that surround the pastures in the Mirandese plateau. Miranda do Douro, Portugal 🇵🇹, December 2018 #portugal #trasosmontes photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
At the village of Tó there isn’t just a procession through its street asking for offerings, there’s a whole a staging of a fight of good versus evil with four characters, performed by the local teenager boys. A devil like figure tries to reach a maiden that holds a decorated staff (another symbol of fertility), but a boys comes in between and the devil is doomed to always fail to reach her. The fourth character isn’t really relevant to the performance. Each year, each teenager should perform their character on a specific order, and the Farandulo, the black-painted demon, the one that does all the tricks and pranks is the last of those characters they’re allowed to play.
This is one of the festivities of the Mirandese Plataeu that can be seen on my latest blog post. Tó, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #wintersolstice #festadosantomeninohttps://photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I0000jDa7boPlb1c
At Bemposta, an anonymous demon-like figure runs through the streets at dawn, the legend says it’s cursed to beg an offering at each house for trying to tempt Our Lady (one of those sacred versus pagan so common in these traditions). No one is meant to know who’s behind the mask, whoever he is he surely paid a hefty sum to wear it. But that mask, and the rest of the costume, is covered with pagan symbolism, like the serpent, the oranges and the horns that hold them, and all that can be linked to the fertility rituals where these traditions came from, which have a different meaning that the one Christianity try to give it. This is one of the festivities of the Mirandese Plataeu that can be seen on my latest blog post.
Bemposta, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #wintersolstice #chocalheirodebemposta photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I00…
The “Velha” (Old Woman) character carries a burned cork cross, meant to smudge all those who don’t give a small offering. This is one of the festivities of the Mirandese Plataeu from my latest blog post. Vila Chã de Braciosa, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes #wintersolstice #festadomeninohttps://photos.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/image/I0000pXRyG5Ckd_4
Social distancing voting… Portugal’s 2021 presidential elections under a general lockdown. Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2021 #street #lisbon #portugal
Often I hear people I meet in Trás-Os-Montes complaining about fog, that it didn’t use to be like that, that it has to do with this and that, and I nod agreeing with them. But the truth is I pack my bags thinking if that that year I’ll get some of it, hoping that I can find dawns that surround everything like this small shrine was as I was going to have my breakfast.Bragança, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, December 2019 #portugal #trasosmontes
Snowy mornings like this could make someone feel like they’re not in the southwest corner of Europe. As a friend of mined named it once: “our little big north”… Bragança, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, February 2018 #portugal #trasosmontes
2020 couldn’t have started better, with the first morning of the year having the pastures and stone walls, so common of the Mirandese Plateau, covered with that soft and delicate whiteness that comes from mist and frost. Only a donkey is missing to check all the boxes for this part of the country, there were some, but not on this pasture. It’s the kind of dreamy winter morning I always hope getting when going to Trás-Os-Montes.It kind of went downhill from here… Not necessarily from this day, but you know what I mean…Miranda do Douro, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, January 2020 #portugal #trasosmontes
Although placed in a pleasant corner of Europe, not all places in Portugal have a mild winter where British can escape to. Despite a permanent white blanket of snow throughout all season isn’t a thing, in some places temperatures often go below zero. Like at Trás-Os-Montes, in the northeast corner of the country, where these leaves of Pyrenean oak remain frozen by a shadowy corner of the road that hadn’t received the light of the morning sun. Bragança, Trás-Os-Montes, Portugal 🇵🇹, December 2016 #portugal #trasosmontes
