GAY PORTUGAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 218, 13 September 1940, Page 6

GAY PORTUGAL

PEACEFUL PEOPLE. IN WAR-RENT EUROPE. THIS IS EXHIBITION YEAR. This description of life In refugee-crowded Portugal is by a prominent British Journalist, formerly First Secretary of the British Embassy In and now on his way to join the British lotion in Rio de Janeiro.

(By PHILIP CARR.)

LISBON, August 12. Although bitterly ironic contrasts are to be found at this moment all over Europe, there is perhaps no place which is so paradoxically full of them as Portugal. Lisbon is packed with visitors. Many of these visitors are refugees from France —French and English and American, Polish and Dutch and Belgian, Jew and Gentile —waiting and scheming to obtain, first the permission and then the transport to reach their own country or any country that will take them. They are not a beggarly horde of refugees. Most of them, a few weeks ago, would have been considered well-to-do. A large proportion have arrived in their own motor cars. But all of them, in leaving France, crossing Spain and entering Portugal, have accomplished an Odyssey which has impressed upon them the stern economic truth that, in certain circumstances, being rich j counts for nothing if the ready cash is j in a foreign currency which no one will j accept; that having millions in a bank j useless if no one will take your j cheque. j I have myself seen a member of the I most famous financial family in Europe | carrying across the international bridge | at Irun the two bags which were hisi complete luggage, and sitting down on them at the other end, while he waited for permission to enter Spain. You might have thought he was some poor emigrant, and not a -well-known figure in the salons of three capitals. The war refugees are not the only visitors to Lisbon, nor are the war and its problems the only things in which the Portuguese are taking an interest. Tourists From Colonies. Here is the great paradox. While Europe is thinking in terms of war and restrictions and sacrifice, Portugal is thinking in terms of peace and prosperity and plenty. At least half the occupants of, the Lisbon hotels are tourists from other parts of Portugal, from the Portuguese colonies and from Brazil—whose inhabitants are Portuguese in race and language—tourists, come to visit the remarkably beautiful national exhibition of this year. The exhibition has been organised to commemorate the eighth centenary of the foundation of Portugal as a kingdom, and the whole of Portugal is gay with bunting in connection with rt. The prominent places in the daily papers are taken, not by war news, but by accounts of some ceremony or other in connection with the exhibition, the inauguration of a new pavilion, the opening of a Congress, the performance of a new musical work, and so forth. The exhibition is indeed something more than a reminder of Portugal's glorious past. It is an expression of her satisfaction in her very comfortable present. One expression of this modest prosperity is that the people seem to have enough to eat. There is ample food, and everyone eats amply—indeed, rather too amply,.say some Portuguese doctors. The food is as good in quality as it is abundant in quantity. And yet Portugal is not really rich, and the life of the great majority of the Portuguese people is extremely modest. But they are industrious, their tastes are simple, their temperament is happy and contented, and their climate is delightfuL They might perhaps be richer if they were heavily industrialised, but the fact •that they are not has enabled them to maintain the agricultural and maritime character which has not changed for centuries, and to keep alive many traditions and much regional individuality which are admirably illustrated in the exhibition.

Unspoilt Simplicity. There is hardly a thing in the architecture br the decoration which does not show artistic originality and simple taste. Prominence is given to local craftsmanship, local costume, local background. There are charming reproductions of old village streets and houses' and of the fishing boats which still follow their ancient and picturesque form and colour. Sea consciousness is expressed again and again in the same spirit as the "Manuelan"' architecture of the sixteenth century. And yet what most of all impresses the visitor who arrives from the horrors of the Europeon cauldron is not so much Lisbon and the exhibition itself, but the freshness and simplicity and gaiety of the local festivities in the smaller towns. On a recent Sunday I attended one of these festivities in the little town of Tomar, which I knew already* because its circular thirteenth-century 'Church of the Templars in the centre of an enormous sixteenth-century monasterv is one of the purest gems of architecture in the world. The streets were decorated not only with flags, but with embroidered silk shawls and brocaded bedsprwds hung out of every window. The official party was greeted br a salvo of rocket*—the Portuguese, who are a childlike people, take a joy in dayhght fireworks. The festival "consisted of a processional offering of meat and wine and bread to the poor. Oxen with horns gilt and festooned with flowers, represented the meat. Thev would be killed to-morrow. The wine, m large barrels, was on wagons to which the oxen were harnessed. Characteristic and Beautiful. The characteristic and beautiful part of the whole thing was, however, the offermg of bread. Two by two walked three hundred young women. Dressed completely in white, each accompanied 1 by a young man in his best clothes and! each carrying, balanced upon her head, 1 a sort of tower, at least three feet IIHI ! constructed of sticks driven through l loa\es of l>read and adorned with ' coloured flowers, sometimes real, but in most cases of paper. At the top of this ' tower was a symbolic dove, also in cases of paper, but real in one or two.' Tins procession passed through all the streets of the sunlit town, to the im-' mense joy and pride of the whole popu- i lation, who cheered and set off more fireworks. Xobody seemed to think of' other explosions not so manv hundreds! of miles awr.y.- (N.A.X.A.) * |