MARCH 31, 2022 – My main objective in Spain and Portugal was therapeutic sunshine. I was otherwise ignorant of the rich culture and history of the region—beyond the little that I’d learned in my study of colonization of the New World. Only on the cusp of much later travels to Iberia did I learn more about Europe’s outlying, southeast peninsula. Had I been more attuned to what lay underfoot in 1981, I would’ve devoted more effort to exploring it. But sunshine—and news reports coming out of Poland—distracted me from the richness of Spain and Portugal.
On the train from Madrid to Lisbon, I met a traveler my age from Denmark. When he learned that I had a musical background, he revealed his interest in jazz. At first this was common ground, but for the rest of the rail journey and well into the night (we stayed at the same cheap pensione in Lisbon) he talked non-stop about jazz. Apart from Allen, the train aficionado whom I’d encountered on the Indian-Pacific (see 2/5/22 post), I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who talked incessantly for hours about a single subject. It became so insufferable, I had to become very scarce, very fast the next morning.
I found ample sunshine as I wandered the old streets of Lisbon and along the waterfront. The next day, I found my way to mist-bound Sintra, outside Lisbon, and site of the remarkable Pena Park and Pena Palace sitting atop a strategic hill overlooking Sintra.
Little could I’ve known that 37 years later I’d return to Portugal with my wife, our son Byron, and his fianceé, Mylène Fernandes, whose family is deeply rooted in the intimate, centuries-old villages of Cortiços and Cernadela in Trás-os-Montes, a beautiful, bucolic province in the northeast corner of Portugal; that we’d return a year later for Byron and Mylène’s storybook wedding in Cortiços and movie-set reception at the hillside home of Mylène’s parents (surrounded by olive groves) attended by people from all over the world; that my wife and I would embark on a grand tour of the country from the far north to Algarve (the southern coast); that we’d develop a close friendship with Joana and João, a couple that splits their time between an apartment in an old cosmopolitan section of Lisbon and a house with scenic views in Lagos in Algarve; that I’d read deep and wide about Portugal’s history and think of buying a retirement home in Porto—in a country that has become one of my very favorite places on earth.
Nor did I know that I’d become fascinated by Seville, Malaga, Grenada, Cordoba, all of Andalusia, the history of the region, the Reconquista, the Inquisition, and so on.
Meanwhile, in 1981, Lisbon, then Madrid, immediately thereafter—where I took long walks, spent a whole day at del Prado, and attended a bullfight—served as a short break from months of intense travel. I needed to catch my breath. Restored, I headed for Scandinavia, with a detour through Switzerland.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
