Spanish Motorcycle Diaries - Day 8. From Castelo de Vide to Porto. (May 2019)
Uma andorinha não faz verão. One swallow does not make a summer. Or so the inscription went on a sugar bag in Marvao the morning after. The previous night, a magical one in the mediaeval village-cum-fortress of Castelo de Vide in Portugal’s mountainous Alentejo border region with Spain, in the Serra de Sao Mamede nature park, I had paid a compliment to the Yamaha FJR 1300, which had taken me 2/3 around the globe over the last 11 years, to the tune of ‘still looking good for your money’.
Just goes to show, one should never shower unprompted praise on unsuspecting third parties. Maybe it did not like the contextual setting of that praise; or it just had enough, some 2,200km away from Barcelona with barely a day’s respite on this long way round the Iberian Peninsula. Or it could read my mind, paying lip service to its enviable service record while eyeballing the new model in showrooms along the way with an eye to easing it into retirement next year, after the Spanish adventure had run its course.
At any rate, not having had any dinner nor wine like the rest of us, it decided to show me that I had been under appreciative of its endurance and epic Japanese reliability, and the accelerator cable gave away in my hand at a small innocent twist, twiddling in the wind like a loose thread and putting an end to any forward movement whatsoever; we rolled halfway down the hill to our abode for the night, a former convent from the 14th century, and it came to a rest there, maybe hoping to share the fate of the last monks from the 18th century.
As our landlord told us the next morning on the grand tour, anti-clericalism had been rising after three centuries of a symbiotic if not unified relationship between state and church in Portugal (which had generated its own Portuguese Inquisition early in the 16th century, and had also led to the eviction of the Jewish and Moorish populations of Portugal, just as in neighboring Spain), and thus the state sought to take back property from the church, reversing the gains that it had bestowed to the institution during the drive to expel the Moors from power, again with strong parallels to the Spanish history of the Reconquista. When monasteries like our Convento da Senhora Vitoria, highly recommended as a magical, tranquil, unique and inexpensive accommodation, was the objective of that repossession, the state had the magnanimity to let all remaining monks accomplish their work for the Lord until their last day … and so we wondered whether our magnificent room with a view had hosted the last monk, unable to let go, torn between continued service in the name of the Lord and the quiet desire to be done with it all and retire in his own way.
Well, Japanese machine, let me tell you don’t do that to a German owner, lest you find that upon retirement your replacement will be a Bavarian driving machine …But … everybody in life deserves a second chance, and Luis, the kind Yamaha motorcycle shop man from nearby Portoalegre (not the one in southern Brazil that we used to pass in the bus from Kesis’a Sao Paolo to Freddy’s Uruguay, thankfully), quickly came to collect the beast and reassured me that once the respective replacement part had been supplied in a couple of days, it would be like new, and I should not even countenance thoughts of betrayal.
And so we agreed that I would show up in a month or so, maybe accompanied by my adventurous godson Patrick once he had finished his first year of studies in Boulder, Colorado, to give the Yamaha a second chance, and to make a second trip out of it, via Avila, the Valle de los Caidos (Franco’s monumental fascist tomb and resting place of over 30,000 civil war dead, from which a recent parliamentary motion from the opposition now seeks to remove his tomb), and the long-overdue visit to Madrid – so how about that, Pat?
[Our landlord also explained the slab-covered juxtaposed seats in the convent, which had been placed advantageously in front of large windows, and called them enamoradores, the plural of ‘falling in love’ in Spanish. Quizzed on how that was consistent with the all-male monk existence, he waved a hand and alluded to the general concept, applicable to monks and all. Unforgivably, I did not take a picture of these seats and could also not back up his assertion on the internet, but will try to do better on the next visit to Castelo de Vide – unless you want to check them out for yourself with a significant other? -- The Church is evidently making a spirited comeback, though, as we saw hundreds of pilgrims walking south to a town where the pope is expected next week.]
Europcar in Portoalegre were very efficient, one really did not have to miss a beat, so we did manage to see the region’s most fabled sight, the beautifully restored mountain table village-cum-fortress of Marvão, affording incredible vistas across to nearby Spain and into the Portuguese valleys below. And had a chance to contemplate the Ludwig Wittgenstein quote chiseled into the model of this quarzitic mountain top-cum-town: ‘The limits of our language are the limits of our world.’
286km and a couple of hours later, some spent on splendid empty Portuguese motorways (another déjà vu all over again …), we rolled into Portugal’s second largest town, the bohemian home for four years of our globetrotting friends Romas and Florence, with whom we were happy to be reunited at last, after all these years. Spirits undented, motorcycle pride hurt a little, but actually quite relieved not to have to race back 1200km on Spain’s marvelous motorways over the next 48 hours, so somebody had their hand in all this great planning after all.
até logo!
