This year’s Algarve post will, for the first time,
concentrate on a single place. We spent a morning in the small coastal town of
Lagos, as we have done several times before, and it is has always seemed a place
worth writing about – so I have.
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| Route finding in Lagos (October 2008) |
Towards the western end of the Algarve’s south coast, just
west of the city of Portimão, the little River Bensafrim reaches the sea on the
leeward side of a small peninsula. It was an obvious site for a harbour and the
last few hundred metres of the Bensafrim were canalised many years ago so that
it enters the sea a much larger and more important waterway than would seem
possible a kilometre or so inland. The canal provides access to the extensive
harbour, once exclusively for fishing boats, but now also home to yachts and
pleasure craft of all sizes and degrees of opulence.
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| The River Bensafrim reaches the sea, Lagos |
Beside the river the long, palm-lined thoroughfare of the
Avenida dos Descobrimentos (Avenue of Discoveries) defines one side of the old town,…..
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| Avenida dos Descobrimentos, Lagos |
….. while the semi-circular city wall, still largely intact,
defines the landward side. Lagos has long spread beyond its protective wall,
but it remains a small town and the outer areas are sympathetic in style and
tone.
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| Lagos city wall (October 2008) |
Beside the Avenida dos Descobrimentos is the Praça da República
with its statue of the Infante Dom Henrique, erected in 1960 to commemorate the
five hundredth anniversary of his death. In front of Dom Henrique is a more
recent fountain. The Portuguese are generally good at fountains, but this one
needs attention and currently looks like a puddle beside a broken water main.
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| Praça da República, Lagos |
Dom Henrique stares seriously across the puddle. He is
better known as Henry the Navigator, but although he sent out Magellan.
Vasco da Gama, and the other descobridors on their great voyages of discovery, he never
personally navigated anything anywhere, but who would have remembered him if he
was known as Henry the Facilitator?
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| Henry the Navigator, Praça da República, Lagos |
In the far corner of the Praça is the site of the old slave
market, which became Europe's first slave market since the Roman Empire when it opened in 1444. The local tourist authorities are quick to direct you to the
slave market, and equally quick to point out that Portugal was the first major
power to abolish slavery, which it did in the 1750s (visiting
Korčula in 2012
we encountered the Statute of Korčula
which outlawed slavery, if only on that one small Croatian island, in 1214)
They admit, in rather smaller print, that the old Customs
House which now stands on the site had nothing to do with the slave market. Like
most Algarve towns Lagos was destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami of 1755.
The Customs House, though worth seeing in its own right, was built after the
earthquake and long after trading in human beings had ceased.
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The Old Customs House on the site of the even older Slave Market
Praça da República, Lagos |
From here we walked into the cobbled and pedestrianised main
street of the old town.
This year's Algarve visit was marred by both a week of poor
weather and the cold Lynne brought with her developing into flu like symptoms. Our
fifteenth trip of this series and perhaps twenty-first in all was not our best.
On the plus side we enjoyed two dinners with our friends (and landlords), Tessa
and Malcolm (
see Algarve 4), had lunch with my 'cousin' Ricky and her husband Zeca (
see Algarve 5), and, two days before visiting Lagos, entertained Mike and Alison - who appear on many of the walking
posts on this blog – and their friends Steve and Jan to lunch. They were
touring Spain and Portugal in their motor homes and were passing through the
Algarve.
It was time for coffee and a pastel de nata, so we headed
for the nearest café only to discover Mike, Alison, Steve and Jan there too.
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Steve, Lynne, Jan, Alison, Mike
Coffee in the main street, Lagos
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After our coffee, cake and chat (and this digression) we
continued up the long narrow street. Lagos attracts many tourists and the town’s
citizens do not want them to go hungry - almost every building is a restaurant.
Most are Portuguese, but if you want a pizza or fancy the Indian or Chinese
option, well that's available too.
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| Restaurants line the main street, Lagos |
The street ends in the Praça Gil Eanes. Lagos-born Eanes, a
minor figure of the Age of Discovery, shares his surname with Portugal’s
first democratically elected president after the Carnation Revolution ended
forty years of dictatorship in 1974. The statue of Dom Sebastião by João Cutileiro
dates from that revolutionary period and if the statue of Henry the Navigator, completed
in the 28th year of the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, is overly formal this,
perhaps unsurprisingly, tends to the other extreme. Prince Sebastian looks like
a skateboarder who has taken off his helmet to scratch his head.
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| Dom Sebastião, Praça Gil Eanes, Lagos |
Dom Sebastião became 'King Sebastian I of Portugal and the
Algarves' in 1554 at the age of 3. On reaching his majority he proved an active
and able, if short-lived monarch. His popularity and his presence here are a
reminder that the Portuguese, like the British, prefer glorious losers (Scott
of the Antarctic, Henry Cooper, Sterling Moss) to out-and-out winners. Three
hundred years after the last of the Moors had been kicked out of Portugal, Dom
Sebastião got it into his head that he needed to conquer North Africa and
convert the Moors to Christianity. He assembled an army of 18,000 (because you
need an army to convert people to a religion of peace and love) and set sail
from Lagos in 1578. His makeshift army encountered a far superior Moroccan force at Alcácer-Qibir
and was annihilated. Much as I appreciate a hopeless quixotic gesture, taking
18,000 others to their deaths alongside you smacks of unhealthy
self-absorption. Despite that he is known as
O Desejado (The Desired One) and, like a Portuguese King Arthur,
will one day return to save his country in its hour of greatest need.
Walking back down the street, we dropped into the Lagos
Regional Museum, which is built round, and indeed contains, the Igreja de Santo
António. St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of those seeking for what they have lost, was a 13th
century Portuguese Franciscan friar who devoted his life to the care of the
poor. Born in Lisbon he spent the latter part of his short life in Italy and
died in Padua. Immensely fussy gilded carvings cover every surface not devoted
to paintings of the life of St Anthony. It is regarded as one of the most
lavishly decorated churches in the Algarve, an area where decorative excess is
the rule rather than the exception. The wood seems to hold the odour of
incense, but it could do with some cleaning - a daunting job for anybody. I
can't say the interior is really to my taste, but it is difficult not to admire
it. Photography was not allowed but a 30 second YouTube video of the interior can be seen
here.
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| Church of St Anthony, Lagos |
The rest of the museum is an eclectic collection of stuff,
most of it connected with or coming from Lagos. The hallway covers the period
from the Stone Age to the Romans. There are some solid looking Neolithic tools,
an impressive Bronze Age helmet, several reconstructed burials and a collection
of oil lights and other pottery fragments. There are tableaux and some wonderful
photographs depicting local life a century or more ago when the Algarve
depended entirely on fishing and agricultural. There are models of all sorts,
including a selection of sample pieces of furniture made and donated by a local
master carpenter. There is a collection of banknotes and coins, old and new, a
collection of religious artefacts and an art gallery containing local land and
seascapes.
Captioned in English as well as Portuguese, there is
something to interest everybody.
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| Ponta da Piedade (Oct 2008) |
A short distance south of Lagos is the Ponta da Piedade,
where the peninsula terminates in cliffs, caves and offshore stacks. You can
wander the cliff paths and view the rocks from the angle of your choice.
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| Ponta da Piedade (October 2008) |
The ponta can be windswept and the sea wild, but usually a
gentle swell laps up against the rocks. A set of steps descend the cliff to
where boatmen wait to take punters out to visit the caves.
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| Steps to the boats, Ponta da Piedade (October 2012) |
A lot of people visit Lagos, some on large groups, whether
on excursions from the major resorts to the east or from cruise ships docked in
Portimão, but the small town manages to retain its charm and its sense of
proportion. It is well worth dropping by if you are lucky enough to be in the
area.
