I thought I should record my last thoughts about the Portugal trip for posterity. Remember, this was a family trip, which included an 8 year old for the entire trip and a 15 year old, an 11 year old and a 2 year old for most of it. So it wasn’t the trip that we would take if it was just the two of us. If it were just us, we would have seen more “sights”, to be sure, and my impression of things might be different. They also might be different if the temperature for the last 5 days in Lisbon didn’t hover around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or if the Pope and an estimated 1.5 million Catholic teenagers from all around the world weren’t in town. Don’t get me wrong – all of those things added to the trip, provided additional interest, and so forth. But, they also might have affected my thinking about the country. But here goes:

1. When I came to Portugal for the first time in 1972, I was an experienced European traveler, but I had not been to Portugal or Spain before. Spain, then still Franco Spain, mesmerized me – the sophisticated cities, the primitive villages, but most of all the ruggedness of the country, the pervasiveness of its history – I felt that I had left Europe and landed someplace else. When I crossed the line into Portugal (in the far South, heading for the Algarve), I especially felt the contrast with Spain. The jaggedness sharpness of Spain turned into the calmness of Portugal. I was back in Europe, I thought – with one exception. Although Lisbon and the Algarve were the Europe of 1972, rural Portugal was the Europe of 1922 – farmers carrying their crops on major roads on carts led by horses or oxen, women walking along the sides of roads carrying all sorts of things (including babies on their backs), often carrying things carried on the top of their heads, older women all dressed in black, head to toe, showing they were in perpetual mourning for their late husbands. This was the context in which I had pictured Portugal before I returned in 2023.
2. Of course, I was not surprised that I didn’t see any ox drawn carts, that no one seemed to carry anything on their heads, and that I only saw two older (much older, they appeared) women dressed in mourning black. Now I saw a country with modern farming, fast roads, and modern amenities.
3. I admit not to knowing a lot about the full arc of Portuguese history. I don’t have a big picture and, perhaps not surprisingly, I am not looking for it. I don’t see an obvious connection between Portugal today and Portuguese history (there are many historical buildings, especially churches, but they mean little to me). This is actually a surprise in many respects because, although the arc escapes me, I am somewhat familiar with aspects of Portuguese history, all (most?) of which is pretty admirable. Let’s look at what I know (or think I know).
4. In the 14th century, when Pope Clement V, ordered the destruction of the Order of the Templar Knights across Europe and when, in most countries, Templars were arrested, tried and often killed, and their extensive holdings taken over by other religious orders designated by the papacy, in Portugal the King simply said that the Templars were now to be known as the Order of Christ and nothing was to change. No arrests, no trials. Business as usual.
5. In the 15th century, Portuguese navigators rounded Africa, traveled to India and in the early 16th century went to South America, setting the stage of much that followed; many of the navigators (including Christopher Columbus, who wound up financed by Spain, not Portugal, to his surprise and perhaps disappointment) were members of, or closely related to the Order of Christ (this includes Prince Henry the Navigator).
6. In 1492, when Spain issued its final expulsion order to the remaining Jews, the Portuguese king welcomed Jews to Portugal; although the hospitality did not last long (the Inquisition made the tolerance impossible), the Jews were not “expelled” from Portugal, although they were free to leave, but rather were baptized en masse and proclaimed to be Christians. Many stayed and many continued to practice their religion in secret, to spread out to Portuguese colonies throughout the world, to expand and lead the Jewish community in Protestant Netherlands and so forth. The language of many Jews around the world in the 15th through the 17th centuries was Portuguese and in many places, describing someone as Portuguese was a way of saying that they were Jewish. (As an aside, when Edie and I visited the oldest Jewish cemetery on Jamaica some years ago, we saw that the 17th century tombstones were etched in Portuguese and Hebrew)
7. Portugal remained neutral in World War II, as did Spain, but Portugal did more than Spain did in allowing Jewish organizations to set up offices in Lisbon to handle emigration from Europe, and provided transit visas to Jews fleeing Hitler and waiting for further immigration opportunities; the only trick was getting to Portugal because, once you were there, you were able to live freely.
8. But that’s all background. What about today? Today, when you are in Portugal, although everyone does speak Portuguese, do you really “know” you know you are in Portugal? What do I mean? Do you know who is the current prime minister of the country? Or what type of political party he/she represents? Or what type of government the country has? My guess is that the answer is “no”. And that would be the answer, I would go on to guess, of 99% of the tourists in the country. There is no sign of Portuguese politics – you don’t see political signs or slogans, or opposition signs, or anything to let you know that politics mean anything in this country. This is not a country where every home flies a Portuguese flag – in fact you could spend weeks in the country and not even be able to identify a Portuguese flag. Yes, you do see a “Parliament Building” if you happen to pass it – but you have no idea what goes on in there, and I don’t think it is even marked. But in the country, life seems to go on just fine – perhaps there is a government, perhaps even a deep (extraordinarily deep) state, but the Portuguese go out of their way to keep quiet about it.
9. It is an attractive country, but again in a low-key fashion. Hills, vistas, appealing towns, beaches. Living in the places we were the coast along could be very pleasant and inexpensive, indeed.
10. But Lisbon? Lisbon is a city of under 600,000 people that seems like a metropolis of 6,000,000. It is a very old city, situated on very hilly terrain (the “City of Seven Hills”), with beautiful and expansive views from several places of the Tagus River estuary. Construction of the castle overlooking the city began over 2000 years ago, the buildings in some neighborhoods go back hundreds of years, the road pattern is a jumble – one lane streets snaking up and down hills, circulating around, coming into complicated intersections too confusing even for a roundabout. And virtually all of the residential neighborhoods look the same. Did we see one stand alone house? I don’t think so. Lisbon is a city of three to five story apartments buildings, with flat fronts often tiled and just as often painted in pastel colors. Even the nicest of residential buildings look like they have seen better days on the outside. The roads are narrow, the sidewalks are all the same type of cobblestone (and the sidewalks vary from very wide to very narrow and are filled with obstructions, often cafe chairs),and you cross at the crosswalks only (if you do, you are safe as you can be; if you don’t, may God protect you). The ground floors of these residential buildings often house shops of various types – small groceries, service establishments like laundries or locksmiths or what have you, or retail establishments. There are empty store fronts and the occupied establishments seem to be open at the whim of the proprietors (some open for a few hours in the morning, close for a few hours mid-day, and open again from, say, 3 to 7; others are less regular; and some simply have signs that say “we are on vacation this month; see you in September”, or something to that effect). And cafes – almost every block has at least one small cafe, serving good coffee and bad pastries, with chairs inside and in front, with people gathering from early morning to late night. How any of these cafe owners or merchants make a living is a mystery. Again, every residential neighborhood looks like this, so as you drive through the city, nothing seems to change.
11. Yes, there is a large downtown commercial area where the buildings are a bit taller, the sidewalks a bit wider, the restaurants a bit larger and so forth. And there are a number of public squares with statues of people you have probably never heard of. But even though the scale is different from the residential areas, the feel is – to me – identical.
12. Along the very broad Tagus, the feel is different. It is flat down there, and you see some modern apartment buildings, warehouses and so forth, and some of the newer tourist attractions, such as the Aquarium and the Science Museum we visited. Here you are not in Lisbon, you are in Europe. But drive a quarter mile from the river and you are back in Lisbon.
13. Downtown Lisbon has no true high rises. This must the result of zoning restrictions to preserve the look of the city. And while the city has a number of parks, the city has a minimum of green space when you are not in a park. In the neighborhood we stayed in, for example, you could look down street after street and see nothing green. Until you got to the park.
14. The quality of the food is mixed. Generally good fish and vegetables. And, although most Portuguese restaurants have similar menus, there are some surprises, and some surprising and delicious dishes with odd mixtures – like the appetizer I had of chopped salmon gravalox, strawberries, capers and chocolate, or the chickpea burger served on a black olive tapenade. There are also all sorts of other cuisines – Indian (often Goan), Chinese, Japanese, Mexican etc.
15. Finally, the people. They are everywhere – locals and tourists. Perhaps because of the especial crowds of Catholic youth, I was reminded of ants – groups where everyone was clearly doing their jobs as they marched along, and places where everyone was scurrying about in seeming Brownian motion. My immediate reaction to Lisbon is that I don’t want to live here – it is too confusing, too crowded, too homogeneous. But maybe I am totally wrong. Maybe my five days in Lisbon, with the Pope and all the others and the heat, has given me the wrong impression. Maybe if I committed a crime, and the punishment was 6 months in Lisbon, I would come to love it. I think that very possible. And, for sure, as W.C. Fields could/should have said: Better here than Philadelphia.