The Iberian Horseshoe — A Journey

The Sande­man sil­hou­ette, a fig­ure with cape and a broad rimmed hat, was en­joy­ing his eter­nal glass of port. Il­lu­mi­nat­ed in the evening light but with his back to my cam­era, his anonymi­ty re­mained in­tact.

The river flowed under the Ponte Dom Luis 1 on its way from cen­tral Spain to the At­lantic. The Por­tuguese writer, Jose Sara­m­a­go, once stood a few hun­dred kilo­me­tres up­stream from here at a nar­row bor­der cross­ing in the re­mote Tras-os-Montes re­gion. He won­dered if the fish need­ed pass­ports to swim on through and what lan­guage they used.

To Por­tuguese-speak­ing fish this was o rio Douro. Their Span­ish neigh­bours ar­gued it was el río Duero. Hope­ful­ly, they un­der­stood each other, al­low­ing the pol­i­tics of the river to pro­ceed along west­ern de­mo­c­ra­t­ic lines.

I was in­ter­rupt­ed from my rever­ie by a boy cross­ing the bridge from the di­rec­tion of Vila Nova de Gaia. He was sell­ing knick-knacks. One of them was a Bud­dha with a sack con­tain­ing a few world­ly pos­ses­sions. I bought the keep­sake for two hun­dred es­cu­d­os. The Bud­dha’s obese fig­ure re­mind­ed me it was time to eat.

In a cheap restau­rant off the Praça da Liber­dade, I strug­gled through a plate of lulas com batatas. Sur­viv­ing lulas swim­ming north of here, end up on Span­ish menus as cala­mares. I pre­fer them bat­tered rather than bland. This plain dish was served with only a side help­ing of boiled pota­toes.

I found a hos­tel where the re­cep­tion­ist un­der­stood my basic Por­tuguese. I re­tired to my room and watched TV. Un­able to com­pre­hend the di­a­logue of a Brazil­ian soap opera, I zapped with the re­mote until BBC World came on and I fell asleep with the sights and sounds of an old episode of Berg­er­ac.

I was in Opor­to be­cause it was a rel­a­tive­ly easy and eco­nom­i­cal way to get to Gali­cia, the north­ern Span­ish re­gion that, glanc­ing at a map, looks as though it should be part of Por­tu­gal. In fact, back in the eleventh cen­tu­ry they were one and the same king­dom. But the ebb and low of royal suc­ces­sions led ul­ti­mate­ly to Por­tuguese in­de­pen­dence and Gali­cia be­com­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed into the king­dom of Castille and Leon.

At Sao Bento sta­tion, blue, white and yel­low tiles de­pict his­toric bat­tles and Por­tuguese fleets sail­ing to the New World. I would have to come back to Opor­to and learn how to nav­i­gate the nar­row streets. I wrote post­cards on the train. One of them showed women hang­ing out wash­ing along the banks of the Douro. Such im­ages seem quaint on hol­i­day—I would not dream of buy­ing a photo of some­body’s smalls hung out to dry on the Leith Wa­ter­front. But tourists have a fas­ci­na­tion with the mun­dane. Once, on Ed­in­burgh’s Royal Mile, I saw a work­man rip­ping up the street with a pneu­mat­ic drill, while a group of Japan­ese snapped away like pa­parazzi. I won­dered if the work­man was ir­ri­tat­ed or flat­tered by their in­ter­est. He should have put down a wee bon­net and took a col­lec­tion.

I turned over an­oth­er post­card show­ing the cen­tral square, Praça da Liber­dade, and wrote:

Dear Mary,

The In­di­an sum­mer con­tin­ues—a pleas­ant 23 de­grees in Opor­to. It may look very quiet and cul­tured but don’t be fooled by the ab­sence of heavy traf­fic on the front of this card. Frus­trat­ed dri­vers and their honk­ing horns are here in force. Yes­ter­day, I took a stroll down by the river­side—a bit like Leith with palm trees. On my way to Vigo now to begin my new job.

Hope to see you in a month or two. Take care.

Love S. xxx

The train rat­tled along through lush coun­try­side full of eu­ca­lyp­tus trees. Rain was falling as we crossed the bridge where the broad River Minho cre­ates a nat­ur­al bor­der be­tween Por­tu­gal and Spain. I in­ter­rupt­ed the chat­ting cou­ple next to me.

“¿Es la fron­tera, no?”

The woman con­firmed this was so with a friend­ly smile and went back to her con­ver­sa­tion in the soft mat­tress-sell­ing zzzzzzz of Por­tuguese. It sent me into a light sleep, know­ing I could relax a lit­tle, dream, and wake up with Span­ish, a lan­guage in which I was more com­pe­tent, if not at home with yet.