Story Ideas

Average hotel prices in Portugal fell 15% in 2009

Wednesday, 10 March 2010 19:07

The average hotel rate in Portugal fell by 15% (from 96 to 82 euros per night) in 2009, according to the Hotel Price Index (HPI) Hotels.com – making Portugal the 5^th most affordable European destination. Lisbon’s average nightly rate was 84 euros- a 15% drop.

Jewish Travel to the Mountains of Centro

Tuesday, 09 March 2010 00:00

The Serra da Estrela has seen a growing number of tour operators bring Jewish visitors to the region to see its Sephardic heritage. Portugal and Israel and now discussing  direct air link.  More than 1,000 Israelis visit Portugal each year, and 3,000 Portuguese visit Israel. Yet, about  20 percent of Israelis are of Sephardic origin. Last year in Serra da Estrela’s Belmonte Jewish Museum of the 17,840 visitors in total, around 800 were Israeli Jews. Belmonte is rich in the history and traditions of crypto-Jews, who practiced their religion in secret for centuries. The local Serra da Estrela tourism office has prepared an excellent tour of the region’s Jewish heritage (check details under tourism routes and cultural tourism). It was in towns like Belmonte that Portugal’s Jews practiced their religion in secret after the abolition of Judaism in 1496. The village was already famed for being the birthplace of Pedro Álvares Cabral, the first Portuguese captain to sight Brazil in 1500. But, in the 20th century a significant community of cryptic Jews, sometimes called Marranos, emerged. Although they had practiced many of the ritual of Judaism for centuries, they were unaware of their true heritage. Jewish communities around the world came to their aid to help them rediscover their roots, and in 1993 the community welcomed it first rabbi in more that four centuries. Shortly after that Temple Bet Eliahou was built. Amazingly, may of the Jewish families still live in the town’s charming Judiaria, called the Bairro de Marrocos. Other strong Jewish ties may be found at the near by town of Trancoso, where a Lion of Judea relief is still well preserved on the facade of the Casa do Gato Negro, the Medieval Home of wealthy Jewish merchant, and perhaps the local synagogue. The Jewish quarter is well also preserved in this living museum.

Republica Portuguesa is celebrating 100 Years in 2010

Thursday, 18 February 2010 17:14

On October 5,1910 a revolution ended 771 years of monarchy in Portugal when King Manuel II was deposed and the First Republic was established.

Granted the kings and queens had seen happier days, as the last 30 years of the monarchy were full of turmoil.

In 1910 big republican demonstrations led to a mutiny on Portuguese naval vessels anchored in the Tejo off Lisbon. The army refused to subdue the navy, and instead took up positions around the city. On October 4, two warships launched a series of shells at the royal palace. D. Manuel II and the royal family fled to England, and the following day a provisional republican government was organized with Azorean writer Teófilo Braga as President.

This was a quick end to a quick reign, as Dom Manuel had come to power in a tragedy.

Just two years earlier, on February 1,1908, the royal family was on route to the palace in a carriage. They passed through the river front square in Lisbon called Praça do Comércio, or Terreiro do Paço. There, shots were fired killing King D. Carlos I, and mortally wounding Crown Prince Luís Filipe. Prince Manuel, never groomed for the throne, was proclaimed King of Portugal – and the nation plunged into chaos.

Dom Carlos had been unpopular for allowing Britain to claim land in southern Africa, that and the economic instability of his reign gave life to a powerful republican movement.

The Portuguese First Republic lasted for 16 years and was full of political unrest, turmoil, and instability. There would be 9 presidents, and 38 governments in that period.

It ended in May of 1926, when the military seized power, setting up a dictatorship. On April 25, 1974, the members of the armed forces would again revolt to overthrow the dictatorship, establishing Portugal's Second Republic. Since that April day Portugal has been a constitutional governed nation, with open elections, and a strong sense of civil liberty.

++ “Black Horse Square”
King D. Carlos I died in one of the most beautiful squares in all Europe, opening southwards onto the huge Tejo estuary. Up to the age of aviation, this was Lisbon’s reception hall for visitors arriving by sea, even better able to enjoy its beauty from their vantage points on docking vessels. It was at this dock that the Kings and Heads of State would disembark when visiting Portugal.

Before the 1755 earthquake, it was called the Terreiro do Paço (Royal Terrace). The Royal Palace had stood on the western side of the square since the 16th century when king D. Manuel transferred the court down from the Castle of São Jorge. In 1580, Filipe I of Portugal ordered the building of a new square assigning the work to Filippo Terzi and Juan Herrera (the architect responsible for the Escorial).

But the 1755 earthquake destroyed everything. The name Praça do Comércio (Commercial Square) belongs to the Pombal era and represents the new social order that the prime minister of king D. José I wanted to promote: the trading, financial and bourgeois classes that contributed so much to rebuilding the city.

In the geometric center of the Square, and facing the river, looms a statue of D. José I, mounted on his horse Gentil, the work of sculptor Machado de Castro.

It was unveiled with all due pomp and circumstance on 6th June 1775, the king’s birthday. He discreetly viewed the event from one of the windows in the Custom’s House. The celebration lasted three days and included a gigantic banquet for the people of Lisbon.

On a pedestal by the riverside, there is a likeness of Pombal (removed when the minister fell into disgrace but replaced by the Liberal government in 1834) raised onto the royal shield. The sculpted figures on either side represent Triumph, with a horse, and Fame, with an elephant, in a clear allusion to Portugal’s overseas empire. On the rear side of the pedestal, in low relief, there is an allegoric representation of royal generosity towards a city in ruins with Commerce opening up a chest full of money that is placed at the disposition of this royal generosity. The English took to calling the masterpiece Black Horse Square, and the air of sadness over the Regicide is hard to detect today.

++ Parliament
The Palácio de São Bento, a sweeping complex rising above the Largo de São Bento, is the seat of the Portuguese parliament. It goes by two other names, Palácio da Assembleia Nacional and Palácio da República. The official residence of the prime minister is also located in São Bento.

The Palácio de São Bento began life as a Benedictine monastery in 1598. In 1834, after all religious orders were dissolved, the São Bento monastery was converted into a home for the new constitutional parliament, set up by king D. Pedro. The Neo-Classical design followed a fire in 1895. The building continued to be expanded under architect Ventura Terra until the 1940s.

The interior is a sea of white and pink marble floors and pillars. Statues and wall paintings of the republic abound. The chamber of the former royal Senate is  semi-circular with Corinthian columns. Paintings by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro hang in the elegant hall in front of the chamber, which is nick named "Passos Perdidos" (Lost Steps). Wall paintings in the Salão Nobre by Domingos Rebelo from 1944, show allegoric scenes from the age of exploration. On the ground floor two bells from the original monastery are all that remain of the building.

++ Presidential Palace
The Belem National Palace (Palacio Nacional de Belem) is the official residence of the President of Republic. It is set near the Tejo River in Belem, near the areas many monuments. The Palace was originally built in the 16th century by the noble Manuel of Portugal, on a hill facing the Tejo, and the then new Jerónimos Monastery. In the 17th century the palace was purchased by the Count of Aveiras. The five buildings that compose the main façade of the Palace date to the second half of the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, King D. João V bought the Palace and proceeded to expand and redecorate it.

The Great 1755 Lisbon Earthquake did not damage the Palace. The decoration of the courtyards and interiors of the Palace are mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries when the Palace was mostly used to house foreign guests.

In 1912, the new Republic’s Presidents started living in the Palace. Today,  it is the official residence of the President of the Portuguese Republic. President Ramalho Eanes (served 1976-1986) was the last president to live in the Palace, and today it is a work place.

++Proclamation of the Republic
Lisbon’s Praça do Município (Municipal Square), a small peaceful square today where the City Hall, Appeals Court and Navy Arsenal stand. But it was not always that quiet. The City Hall building is a neoclassical palace with an elegant exterior. The interior, which can only be visited on free-guided tours on Sunday mornings, is rich in works of art, including a painting showing Marquês de Pombal during the times of the reconstruction of Lisbon.

Outside the building is a large pillory with a spiral column built of a single block in the 18th century, and crowned with a gilt metal sphere. And it was here, from the balconies of this building, that the republic was proclaimed in 1910.

++Pena Palace, Sintra
The fantastic Palacio da Pena is one of the best examples of 19th-century Romantic revivalism in Portugal. And, it stands as a testament to the disconnect between the last kings and the Portuguese people. Situated at the top of Sintra’s Monte da Pena, the palace was built on the site of an old monastery belonging to the Order of St. Jerome. It was the idea of Dom Fernando of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, who married the queen Dona Maria II in 1836. After falling in love with Sintra, he decided to buy the convent and the surrounding land to build a summer palace for the royal family. The interior of the palace is still decorated according to the tastes of the kings and queens who lived there. In fact, some of the rooms are still filled with the personal belongings of the last kings, as if they had just popped out for the day.

The king consort adopted Portuguese architectural and decorative forms for the palace(neo-Gothic, neo-Manueline, neo-Islamic, neo-Renaissance), and, in the surrounding area, he decided to make a magnificent woodland park with a wide variety of exotic tree species.

A restaurant is a new feature in one of the wings of the palace, with a terrace that offers a beautiful panoramic view over the Serra de Sintra and the Atlantic coast.

++The Final Bragança Stronghold
Situated in a fertile region of the Alentejo, Vila Viçosa was the base of the last dynasty of Portuguese kings. The House of the Dukes of Bragança, the most powerful noble family after the Royal Family from 1400 onward, was established here. The first Duke of Bragança was D. Afonso, the illegitimate son of D. João I (1385-1433). But the massive building of the Duke’s Palace, which is open to visitors, was actually the work of the fourth Duke of Bragança, D. Jaime, who made an important contribution to the town's development in the sixteenth century.

During the holding of the Cortes or parliament in 1646, D. João IV, the eighth Duke of Bragança, crowned the image of Our Lady of the Conception, who was worshipped at the parish church, and declared her to be the patron saint of Portugal. After that, the kings of Portugal never again wore a royal crown.

++ A Portuguesa
A Portuguesa is the republican national anthem of Portugal, and was penned some 18 years before the proclamation of the Republic. Written by Alfredo Keil and Henrique Lopes de Mendonça in 1890 it was the anthem of a failed republican coup in Porto in January, 1891. Two decades later in 1911, it was made the national anthem of the new Portuguese Republic.

In 1890, Britain demanded Portugal to release all claim to land between Angola and Mozambique in southern Africa. The King D. Carlos had little choice but give in to the powerful British navy, but popular outrage ignited a republican movement. Keil, a Portuguese composer of German lineage, penned the melody for A Portuguesa as a protest march. And poet Lopes de Mendonça wrote the words. It was soon banned, and became the song of the resistance:

Heroes of the sea,
Noble people,
Valiant and immortal nation,
Raise up today once more
The splendor of Portugal!
Amid the mists of memory,
Oh nation, feel the voice
Of your noble forefathers,
Who shall lead you to victory!

http://videos.sapo.pt/FQFzzWglzBakoVkIwg2F

Happy 100, República Portuguesa! That is a lot of candles.

Cork takes flight

Tuesday, 02 February 2010 00:00

Reuters reports that cork is being used to build lightweight parts for aircraft. Plane parts designed and molded by DynAero in the Alentejo  to build its ultra light two- and four-seat planes  instead of plastic  A prototype cork plane should be ready this year. The idea is to replace light plastic PVC with cork composite in the fuselage, wings and flaps of light plane, where it is coated with carbon fiber. the cork-carbon combination is not only light but possesses fire retardant properties. Shredded cork is already used in the thermal protection coating on the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank. Cork is harvested every nine years  without damaging the trees, making the cork industry one of the world's greenest and sustainable.