INTRODUCTION

In the spring and summer of 2012 I was reorganising the little library in the cultural centre in my adopted home village of Porches. Each morning as I walked up the stairs to the library housed in a small room in a corner of the first floor, I would pass a 26-year-old marble plaque on the wall paying tribute to a royal charter granted by the Portuguese monarch D. Dinis.  The plaque commemorates the 7ooth anniversary of the charter. I sometimes paused on the stairs to let the date sink in. It was granted by D. Dinis in 1286!

The history of Porches actually goes back a lot further….. But before we get into that, for those not familiar with the region, let’s establish the location we are talking about. Situated in the central section of the plain that runs parallel to the Algarve’s south coast, Porches lies about 50 km due south of the main gap between southern Portugal's two low mountain ranges, the Serra de Monchique and Serra do Caldeirão. They divide the Algarve from the much more expansive but much less populous Alentejo. Running east-west, these mostly afforested hills and farmed foothills form amphitheatres looking to the sea and the sun to the south.

Porches is the name both of a village and a wider area known in Portuguese as a freguesia, which translates to ‘parish’ in English. Porches is the most easterly of the four  parishes that make up the municipality  of Lagoa. It has an area of just 16.5 square kilometres and a permanent population of only about 2,300 (national census of 2011). The municipal area covers less than 90 square kilometres and has a total population of about 24,000, though these population figures swell considerably during the summer holiday season.

The town of Lagoa lies 5 km to the west of Porches. To the east, the villages of Alcantarilha and Pêra and the beachside holiday and fishing town of Armação de Pêra are all in the neighbouring municipality of Silves.

The beautiful stretch of coast from Armação de Pêra past Porches and on towards Carvoeiro, comprises golden beaches, rocky headlands, sheer cliffs, sheltered coves and some impressive sea caverns.

Since the onset of tourism as the Algarve’s main economic activity in the 1960s, a lot of construction in the form of hotels, exclusive resorts, condominiums and blocks of holiday apartments has taken place close to the coast. The building density lessens greatly, however, the farther one moves inland. Scattered individual homes of various shapes and sizes have largely replaced old farmhouses and humbler cottages in gently undulating and once intensively cultivated land. Much of the rural land now lies abandoned and forgotten. Wide tracts are occupied mostly by dense, natural vegetation on sandy soils or rocky terrain.

The compact village of Porches is set on a low hill right next to the  EN125 main road on the northern side of the parish. Most people drive by with barely a glance. They don’t know what they are missing. There is an awful lot more to the vicinity of Porches  than meets the eye. It is a fascinating place. The more one gets to know it, the more fascinating and intriguing it becomes. In the chapters that follow, I will try to explain why.

Porches is only one of four parishes in one of sixteen boroughs in the southernmost province of a relatively small country on the margin of the landmass of Europe. So along the way the focus will not always be tight. We need to draw back at times to see the place in context and to describe the bigger picture.

Chapter 1 - THE EARLY DAYS

 The earliest tangible evidence of settled human habitation in the Porches area dates back many thousands of years. Archaeologists claim that some of the artefacts found locally are among the oldest ever discovered in Europe.

Stone axe heads and fragments of other tools found at sites scattered across the parish and along the coast nearby have been traced back to various eras of the Stone Age, from the very distant Palaeolithic, through the Mesolithic to the late Neolithic period, which ended about 5,000 ago.

It is clear that the earliest humans here fished and collected shellfish along the coast, and hunted and gathered wild fruits a little inland. The way of life was very basic and it changed only extremely slowly.

Archaeologists have found very old stone implements at Alporchinhos, Areias das Almas, Crastos, Nossa Senhora da Rocha , Praia Nova and Vale de Olival, all within in few kilometres of each other in the parish of Porches. Artefacts from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods have also been found nearby, particularly at Caramujeira just across the parish boundary in the freguesia of Lagoa. The remains were so plentiful that some are believed to be in the hands of private collectors, but most are now stored in the national museum of archaeology (Museu Nacional de Arqueologia Dr Leite de Vasconcelos) in Lisbon.

Starting about 7,000 years ago during the early Neolithic period, a much more advanced form of humanity began migrating from North Africa along the shores of the Mediterranean. Gradually they made their way into the Iberian Peninsula. Eventually they infiltrated from Andalusia into the Algarve. These newcomers were farmers as well as fishermen. Artefacts suggest they used stone implements to clear woodland and till fields. They built dwellings in small tribal communities, domesticated animals and made pottery. Megaliths were characteristic of this period.

Megaliths are blocks of stone used in Neolithic and Chalcolithic (Copper Age) times to construct various types of monuments. Those constructed as tombs, usually with walled chambers capped by slabs of rock, are known as dolmens. Megaliths placed in an upright position are called menhirs or standing stones. Groups of them were sometimes laid out in rows or in circles as most famously at Stonehenge in southern England. Single megaliths standing alone are called monoliths.

Remains of burial chambers have been found in the Porches area, but the most imposing of the late Stone Age relics are monoliths of different sizes, including one more than two metres tall found about a kilometre southeast of Porches village at Areias das Almas. That delightfully translates into ‘Sands of the Souls’.

Other menhirs have been found a little further to the southeast at Caramujeira and at Alfanzina in the freguesia of Carvoeiro. Menhirs have been found at various other localities across the Algarve, most numerously and notably near Vila do Bispo in the west of the region. 

The practice of erecting menhirs seems to have spread widely across Europe in the few thousand years before Christ. Obviously, they had some important community role, but the precise function of menhirs is still a subject of debate and uncertainty. They may have been territorial markers or general gathering sites. More likely they were places of worship or even astronomical observation points.

Some megaliths involved stones so huge and heavy (one in County Wicklow in Ireland weighs 100 tonnes) that those who erected them must have been adept at organising teams of craftsmen and labourers. The precise orientation of some menhirs indicates that these early settlers also had mechanical and mathematical skills and were knowledgeable about the movements of the sun and moon and perhaps other celestial bodies.

The Porches and neighbouring menhirs were found by a team of Portuguese archaeologists led by Eduardo C. Serrão, J. Varela Gomes and J. Pinho Monteiro in 1975. The first two were large and of a kind found in the previous century at Monte Roma in the northeast of the borough of Silves by the renowned 18^th century archaeologist Estácio da Viega.

The 1975 team also found pottery fragments that suggested the menhirs had been created in the last millennia of the Neolithic period, that is to say, between 3,500 and 4,500 years ago, on the cusp of the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, when relatively advanced groups had replaced the primitive hunter/gatherers. The monoliths were decorated with sculpted wavy lines and in some cases more graphic geometric shapes, the meaning or significance of which is unknown.

The Areias das Almas menhir was the least decorated of the large monoliths, but it had the ‘phallic’ shape so typical of many menhirs throughout Europe. The shape has naturally prompted speculation that the stones may have had some symbolic connection with agricultural sowing and harvesting, human fertility and reproduction, or Mother Nature in general. The reason we can only speculate about the people who erected and somehow made use of the menhirs is that so far we know very little of their beliefs, their language or their way of life.

According to Rossel Manteiro Santos, author of two weighty volumes entitled História do Concelho de Lagoa, published in 2001, the number and quality of menhirs found in the Lagoa municipal area makes this “one of the most important centres of menhirs in Europe”  While this is an enthusiastic exaggeration, he goes on to query why the menhirs have not been given more cultural prominence.
 The people of Portugal, the Algarve and even the borough of Lagoa itself have been kept in the dark about “the priceless pieces of prehistoric art” found here, he says. R.M. Santos was at a loss to explain this “silence and / or forgetfulness.” He added than he was convinced “Lagoa could be transformed into a centre for pre-historical tourism,” a study centre, echoing the region’s glorious pre-historic culture.

The largest of the Areias das Almas menhirs and a couple of smaller ones are on view in the front garden of the Convento de São José in Lagoa. Two other Areais das Almas menhirs are on show in the archaeology museum in Silves.

Areias das Almas menhir

Chapter 2 – FOREIGN INTRUDERS

The Bronze Age that followed the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods started at different times in different places in the world and even within Europe. Portugal is included in the so-called Atlantic Bronze Age, which lasted roughly from 1300 BC to 700 BC.

The tribal people living in isolated communities in southern Portugal were “small in stature, wiry, with high cheekbones and dark complexions,” according to ancient writers who referred to them loosely as “Iberians”.

A sea cavern near Nossa Senhora da Rocha called Forno de Mouros has ben a particularly rich source of Bronze Age artefacts. Burial sites from this period have been found in Porches Velho, Crastos and within the grounds of what is now the Porches International School.  Little is known about these ancient cemeteries except that tombs were constructed of flat rocks and seem to have been designed for bodies laid in the foetal position. Artefacts were found strewn about at random rather than carefully placed.

While the Iberians continued to use stone tools, by the middle of the Bronze Age they would have been introduced to the wonders of metals by a more dynamic people from the far eastern end of the Mediterranean - the Phoenicians.  The most outstanding seafarers of their era, the Phoenicians set up trading posts along the southern Iberian coast, mainly to barter eastern manufactured goods for copper, tin and silver mined in the region, including in the vicinity of Silves. 

Ancient writers variously named the region Cineticum or Turdetânia. One of their main trading posts was at Balsa, the original name for Tavira. Alvor and, perhaps, Silvs are thought to have been founded by the Phoenicians.

In addition to the Phoenicians coming and going in their magnificent galleys, a much higher degree of internal civilisation developed among the Iberian communities with the arrival between the 8th and 6th centuries BC of successive waves of Celts from Central Europe via France. The resulting ethnic mix were a pastoral people who became skilled in working with iron and became collectively known as Celtiberians.

The people of the Algarve and southern Alentejo before the 6th century BC were identified by Herodotus not as Celtiberians but as the Cynetes. Herodotus, the most famous of all ancient Greek historians, considered the Cynetes to be a separate culture from the Celts. He believed the Cynetes to be the most westerly inhabitants of all Europe. Other ancient authors referred to these people in Greek or Latin under various other names, including the Conii, Kunetes or Konioi. Their language was Tartessian and, according to the Greek geographer, philosopher and historian Strabo, they had a capital city in the Algarve called Consistorgis.  The exact whereabouts of Consistorgis is not known but it is thought to have been a little inland from present-day Faro, or further east at Cacela Velha.

From the 6th century BC, resident Algarvian people became all too familiar with Greek as well as Phoenician traders. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians eventually succumbed to the might of the colonist Carthaginians who in the 3rd century BC expanded from their eastern Mediterranean homeland and took command of the western Mediterranean and beyond the Pillars of Hercules at the Straits of Gibraltar.

Carthaginian armies are believed to have taken advantage of the Algarve’s mild climate to overwinter in the region, and yet very little evidence of the Carthaginian occupation has ever been collected.

Polished pottery was a feature of the late Bronze Age and some examples have been unearthed in the parish of Porches, but, in truth, what really went on here in the thousand years before Christ is largely a mystery.

By contrast, the influence of the next great wave of intruders – the Romans - remains profound to this day.

From the start of their occupation and rule in southern Portugal in 137 BC, the Romans began implanting their language, laws, customs, organisational skills, life styles and religion. They built towns and connected them with highways, one of which ran from Ossónoba (Faro) to Olissipo (Lisbon). Remnants of Roman buildings and artefacts survive in the Algarve, most notably at Milreu near Estói, Cerro da Vila (Vilamoura) and at Abicada, between Portimão and Lagos. 

One of the least know Roman ruins lies all but buried in dense undergrowth in the parish of Porches. The ruins are of a dam wall constructed across a gully at Vale de Olival. Usually dry nowadays, it was probably a considerable stream in Roman times. The dam was strongly constructed of rocks held tightly together with a concrete material called Opus caementicium. Such concrete was widely used throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries AD.

The ruin is officially but confusing called the Ponte dos Mouros, meaning Bridge of the Moors. It may also have been a bridge but essentially it was a reservoir dam wall  and it existed long before the Moors arrived. Build in the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, the wall measured 32m wide, 6.5m high and 3m thick and was capable of storing 3,2 square kilometres of fresh water.  
A big section of the dam wall still stands on the right side of the gully. A few large chunks that broke off at some stage lie a little downstream. It would have taken a mighty force to have brought the wall tumbling down, probably a mightier force than water pressure alone. The wall was most likely destroyed by the great earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 1755 that caused so much destruction in the Porches area and beyond.

Archaeologist believe the water held by the dam was probably used for domestic home use and for irrigating crops as well as being fed periodically into tanks used in the fermentation of garum on or near the beach at Armação de Pêra a short distance downstream.  Garum was a fish paste that the Romans used as a condiment. It was made by crushing the innards of such fish as sardines, horse mackerel and tuna and fermenting them in brine. All the raw materials were readily available locally.

Having stood for the best part of 1,500 years from its original construction to the great earthquake, the dam at Vale de Olival was probably used for irrigation throughout the Middle Ages, especially so after the surge in local farming to feed an increasing population from the 15th century.  

Above an overgrown section of the Roman dam wall. 

Below, a close-up.

Chapter 3 - CHRISTIANS and MUSLIMS

Of all the attributes credited to the Romans after conquering and firmly establishing their rule in the Iberian Peninsula, the most profound and lasting was their introduction of the Christian religion.

Prior to the 1st century AD, the Romans were already a highly religious people. In their daily lives, they were devoted to a great number of gods and goddesses. With the Emperor Constantine came the conversion to Christianity and belief in one almighty God.

Legend has it that the apostle Paul brought the gospel to the Iberian Peninsula in 40AD, but there is nothing to substantiate this. More likely, the Romans introduced Christianity in the 2nd or 3rd century AD.

The Algarve was part of the Roman province of Lusitania when the Iberians and Celts began converting from their multi-deity paganism to the new religion. By then the Romans had forced the indigenous peoples out of their hilltop fortifications and resettled them in towns (citânias) each with a centre of administration and justice. They had developed industries such iron smelting and brick and tile-making, built roads and bridges, and opened schools teaching Latin - the basis of modern Portuguese.

The Romans may have established the first fortress in the Porches area at the place we now call Crastos, a word derived from the Latin Castrum, meaning the site of a defensive position. Alternatively, they may have built fortified walls and perhaps also a temple on a nearby narrow headland with sheer 30-metre cliffs on either side. The present chapel is believed to have been constructed at least in part from Roman ruins.

According to local legend, the chapel commemorates an apparition of the Virgin Mary and thus it acquired its name, Ermida da Nossa Senhora da Rocha, Chapel of Our Lady of the Rock. Its most obvious ancient features are the capitals on top of the two pillars in the arched entrance. The one on the right is manifestly Visigothic. The one on the left is heavily weathered but probably dates from the same period.

From their Germanic roots in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Visigoths brought to an end the centuries of innovative Roman rule and created a sprawling kingdom that included the most southern and westerly parts of Europe. At first, the Roman Christians regarded them as heretics. With their Arian beliefs, the Visigoths held Jesus Christ in high esteem but rejected the notion that he was the divinely created son of God. In the late 6th century, however, they came around to accepting the Catholic faith and fully integrated into the culture of the Hispano-Romans. Everything suddenly changed in the year 712 with the arrival from North Africa of invading Muslims.

The latest newcomers were known in Christian Hispania by the Latin word maurus, meaning people from Mauritania, or the Greek mauros, meaning ‘dark’. The Moors, as they came to be known in English, gave the name Al-Andalus to southwestern Spain and Al-Garb to southwestern Portugal. As followers of the prophet Muhammad, they immediately came into conflict with the Hispanic Roman Catholics.

The Christian uprising against the Moors in Portugal – the Reconquista - began before Portuguese national independence was declared in the north of the country the 11th century. The Reconquista progressed sporadically southward, interspersed by major defeats and setbacks – and also long periods of regional peace. 

Intermittently during the first two centuries after their occupation, the Moors had to contend with a foreign irritation along the shores of Iberia in the form of marauding Vikings from Scandinavia. Later, rivalries became even more complicated with warfare between two major Islamic dynasties, the long-established and puritanical Almoravids, and the Almohads, a fiercely reformist movement that originated in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

During the centuries of Moorish occupation, many Christians converted to Islam, either spiritually or nominally. In the periods of relative peace, the Moors contributed immensely to the culture and way of life of ordinary people. In Porches, as elsewhere, they transformed agriculture by introducing new crops and farming methods, including more efficient irrigation systems. Meanwhile, across the country, the population increased along with prosperity even though Reconquista fervour continued to simmer. At times in the Al-Garb in the 12th and 13th centuries it more than simmered. It raged furiously.

Chelb, modern Silves, less than 10km from Porches, became the capital of Al-Garb under the Almoravids. The Almohads seized it in 1156.  A busy city, it had a population of 20,000 or 30,000 inhabitants, twice the population it has today. The Arab geographer Idrisi, who lived from 1100 to 1166, recorded firsthand observations while travelling extensively in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe. He noted that Silves was “fine in appearance with attractive buildings and well furnished bazaars.” It had a port with a shipyard and a thriving trade dealing mainly in fruit and fish with African and Mediterranean ports. The people of Silves spoke pure Arabic and were particularly eloquent and fond of writing poetry. Both the upper and lower classes were elegantly mannered. Idrisi was less complimentary in his praise of Lisbon, describing it simply as “a compact and well-defended town.”

Aside from its architectural elegance, thriving commercialism and rich culture, Silves was noted for its mighty Moorish castle next to a mosque on the high point of the city. This was the scene of savage battles in which Portuguese forces were led or supported by passing Crusaders from northwestern Europe on their way to the Holy Land.

The first important year for the Reconquista in the Algarve came in 1189, the year of the 3rd Crusade. The Portuguese king D. Sancho I asked passing crusaders from Denmark and Friesland to attack the castle in Alvor, 13 km southwest of Silves. Six thousand men, women and children were said to have been killed during that battle.

 That same year, Sancho struck a deal that resulted in a combined Portuguese, English, German and Flemish fleet setting sail from Lisbon for Silves in mid summer. On the fourth day out of Lisbon, the fleet sailed up the Arade River and anchored close to the capital. Those living in the lower part of the city quickly fled to the better-protected upper part. As the Christians advanced, burning everything in their path, the Muslim civilians took sanctuary within the castle walls.

The Christians lay siege to the castle. The defending Moors held out for 49 days before the Christians managed to mine their way in for a second time and cut the main water supply. A condition of their surrender was that the Muslims could leave the castle with whatever possessions they could carry. As they left, however, the Crusaders stripped them of their belongings and sent them empty-handed on a 200 km trek to Seville, the nearest Moorish bastion. The Crusaders looted the castle for three days before the disgusted Portuguese king ordered them out of the castle and back to their ships.

The following summer, Almohad forces from Seville tried to retake the city. That this attack failed was partly due to the fortuitous arrival in Lisbon of a Palestine-bound fleet under the command of England’s Richard I. ‘The Lionheart’ sent a contingent to help with Silves’ defence. The summer after that, Richard’s Crusaders were in Acre in the Kingdom of Jerusalem when the Moors returned once more to Silves to exact revenge for their 1189 humiliation. All of Sancho I’s previous victories south of Lisbon were nullified as the Almohads recaptured Silves and swept through southern Portugal leaving towns in ruins. Another five decades were to pass before Silves was finally conquered by the Christians.

We can only hazard a guess as to what impact these dramatic events had on Porches, a small village and fortress outpost, close by and within Silves’ heavily contested control. But Porches played an unlikely culminating role.

Final victory for the Christians came in the reign of Sancho II and was led by his top military commander, Paio Peres Correio, master of São Tiago. He attacked Estômbar, 6 km southwest of Silves, and then went on to overcome Moorish strongholds all over the Algarve, including the castles at Alcoutim, Castro Marim, Tavira, Salir and Alvor.

Faro and Albufeira fell during the reign of Sancho II’s brother, Afonso III. That left just three Moorish redoubts: Loulé, Aljezur and Porches. Upon the capture of Porches from the Moors in 1249, Alfonso became the first ruler to use the title King of Portugal and the Algarve.

Chapter 4 – ROYAL RECOGNITION

No one knows the origin of the place name Porches, but there have been some interesting guesses. One suggestion is that it dates back to Hispania Lusitania, the Roman province that included much of Portugal and part of Spain. The word Porches has disappeared from the Portuguese language but is still used in Spanish and means the same as ‘porch’ in English. It is thought to have been used in Roman times to denote a slightly elevated space with a fine view. That would have been a fitting name in the days of long ago.

Others have suggested that Porches may have evolved from the word ‘Portimunt’, which was used by a Crusader writing about the conquest of the Moorish capital of Silves in the 12th or 13th century. He was referring to one of the capital’s fortified outposts. Porches was just that at the time. The Crusader cannot have been referring to Portimão because it was not a fortified place. Yet another theory is that Porches derived from Portius or Portia, the name of a Roman family living in the Algarve.

Porches is pronounced the same as the plural of that famous make of German cars. Any resemblance to the cars ends there. There is nothing fast or sleek about the village or the parish. And there never has been.

The earliest known written record concerning Porches was a document issued in either 1250 or 1252. It proclaimed that D. Afonso III had given overall rights to the fortress and neighbouring lands at Porches to one of his nobles, Estevão Anes. The precise location of this original village or Porches (Porches Velho) is not known for sure but it is believed to have been much closer to the sea than the present village.  Nor is it clear if the fortress referred was the fortified headland of Nossa Senhora da Rocha or a separate bastion.

As far as is known, nothing further was officially recorded until 1286, the landmark year when Afonso III’s son and successor, D. Dinis, issued a royal charter laying out the way Porches was to be administered. The king was only 25 at the time but the charter was an early indication of the focus of his reign that would last 46 years.

D. Dinis, who became known as the ‘Farmer King’ (Rei Lavrador), placed far less emphasis on military affairs and more on civic and judicial organisation, agricultural development and bolstering the rights of the lower classes.

Written in Latin, the charter began: “In the name of God, amen. Let it be known to all those present as future generations that I, D. Dinis, by the grace of God King of Portugal and the Algarve, jointly with Queen D. Isabel, my wife, daughter of the illustrious King of Aragon, make this charter to you the people of Porches, both present and future…..”

The charter was intended “as a way of maximising energies for social and military organisation in the extreme south of the country.” It gives a fascinating glimpse into the way of life in the 13th century.

Overall control in Porches was in the hands of a nobleman appointed by the king. Members of the Knights Hospitallers religious military order were among its most distinguished inhabitants and thus endowed with considerable rights, but the charter also sought to protect citizens’ freedom and promote trade.

A council of officials was to be elected by the local people, each with specific fields of responsibility such as justice, salaries, commerce and taxes. It was clear from the 1286 document that fishing and farming were the main economic activities in the area, as they were all across the Algarve.

Seventy-five percent of the population of Porches specifically identified in the charter were military men. Of those fifty-five percent were knights. Top officers, crossbow men, foot soldiers and legal officials accounted for the other twenty-five percent of the military.

The remainder of those covered by the charter included roughly equal numbers of clergy, merchants and artisans.

The main commodities produced and traded in the area seem to have been cereals, rice, bread, wine, fish, figs, olives, vegetables, salt, livestock, leatherwear, linen clothes and handicrafts, especially practical everyday things like utensils.

The king kept some key facilities and enterprises for himself and his successors. For example, he reserved the rights to all saltpans, windmills, slaughterhouses, bread ovens and baths. He insisted on being patron of all existing and future churches – and on all whaling activity in the Porches area.

The king kept ownership of all the fig trees and trading stalls handed down by the ‘Saracens’, meaning the previous Muslim monarchs. Other stalls were owned by Porches inhabitants who paid a monthly licence fee. Traders from outside the area were charged a toll per cartload of goods brought in, but there was no toll on the way out provided they were carrying an equivalent value of local produce. 

Winemakers were strongly discouraged from ignoring the stipulated resting period for wine after fermentation. The first two violations brought about fines. A third resulted in the all the vintner’s wine being thrown out and his vats and other containers being destroyed.

The charter laid down a comprehensive system of taxes on everything from hauls of fish and trade in donkeys to the buying and selling of Moorish slaves. Even noble landowners and monasteries had to pay dues to the king. Bakers had to give him one in every 30 loaves of bread.

The currency at the time seems to have been a mixture of soldos, marabotims and mealhas. Soldos were a gold coin currency originally issued by the Romans but still widely in use in medieval Europe. Marabotims were a gold currency based on the dinar introduced by the Moors and still in use in southern Portugal after the Moors relinquished power. Mealhas seem to have been used most in markets and travelling fairs.
       Crime during the reign of D. Dinis was punishable by fines, some of which seem disproportionate by today’s standards. For example, murder or rape attracted a fine of 500 soldos. Those guilty of murder outside of Porches got away with a fine of just 60 soldos – the same as for a person who drew a weapon in anger even if though no one was injured. A fine of 60 soldos was also levied on those guilty of verbal abuse.

No one was allowed to seize or harm a clergyman caught in a shameful act with a woman, but the woman herself could be seized.

The owner of a property who killed a violent intruder was fined one marabotim. If the intruder was only wounded, he, the intruder, had to pay half a  marabotim. Half a marabotim was the fixed tax on buying a Moorish slave – the same price payable to the king by those from outside the Porches area who wanted to purchase a vat of Porches wine. Half a marabotim was also the tax on every mule, hinny or horse that men from outside the parish bought or sold, whether worth ten marabotims or less. All of the inhabitants of Porches, including the underprivileged were exempt from death duties.

Some of the arrangements seem quite odd nowadays. If a horse killed someone, the owner had to pay with the horse or settle up in some other agreed way. If cattle became lost, the inspector of taxes could impound them for three months and after that do whatever he wanted if the owner did not show up.

In summary, the royal document concluded that those who firmly respected the charter would receive blessings. “Those who act against it will be damned by myself and by God,” declared D. Dinis.

Chapter 5 – PIONEERS AND PIRATES

In an exceptionally busy reign that started at the age of 18 and lasted until his death in 1325 at the age of 63, King Dinis, through his royal chancery, officially designated many cities, towns and villages in addition to Porches. He also defined the nation’s borders, stimulated national identity and arranged unprecedented international trade agreements. With a personal passion for the arts and literature, he declared Portuguese the country’s official language and founded Portugal’s first university.

While none of this had a direct bearing on the parish of Porches, a couple of his other initiatives were much more relevant. He oversaw the structuring of the Portuguese navy as an effective force and set up the Order of Christ. The latter was a purely Portuguese order for members of the religious-military Knights Templar organisation who sought sanctuary from banishment across most of Europe on charges of heresy by Pope Clement V.

Just 25 km west of Porches, largely due to Portuguese sea power and Order of Christ funds, things began happening in the 15th century that would change the direction of world history. The central figure was an Anglo-Portuguese prince, Henrique, who became known in the English-speaking world as Henry the Navigator.

It is highly likely that young men from Porches were involved in the planning, building, refitting and provisioning of ships in Sagres and Lagos during the Age of Discovery. Some probably joined the crews of caravels setting off from Lagos to sail down the west coast of Africa into the unknown. In two incredible, revelatory years - between 1444 and 1446 - as many as 40 of Prince Henry’s ships sailed beyond the southern edge of the Sahara Desert over which the Muslims had long monopolised commerce. The Portuguese thus placed themselves in the forefront of exploring new lands and developing trade in such valuable commodities as gold and slaves. The opening of a sea-route to India followed, as did the establishment of a Portuguese empire and the expansion of the slave trade across the Atlantic.

What astounding tales of adventure on far-off shores must have filtered through to the people of Porches locked into the grind of subsistence farming. And local fishermen in small boats must have marvelled on stories about the doldrums, Monsoon winds and vast open oceans. Information seeped in slowly at first but after several disjointed decades an ever clearing picture must have built up of life out there far beyond the horizon. It must have been one of contrasts that evoked mixed emotions.

For those, especially the young, entrapped in working the land or coastal waters of Porches, a new life of opportunity abroad must have seemed attractive. At the same time, accounts of the deprivation and sickness suffered on long return voyages on open decks and crowded holds on slave slips must have made the people of Porches grateful indeed for small mercies at home.

It is often overlooked nowadays that slavery was a two-way trade. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the parish played its part in the defence of this section of the south coast against pirates and privateers from North Africa. Some of these were based in Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers on the Barbary Coast in the Mediterranean and were thus known as the Barbary corsairs. Much closer to home were pirates and privateers from Tetuoan and Salé, just a day or so’s sail away in Morocco. These unromantic Maghreb marauders, operating either as freelances or under the authorisation of Arab states, had been active during the Moorish occupation of the Algarve. In the fifteen and sixteen hundreds  they considerably stepped up their activities. Attacks along the coast of the Algarve coast were almost common.

Mauraders seizing ships was one thing, but of greater concern to the people of Porches and elsewhere were organised raids on coastal villages and towns. The attackers’ objectives were not only to plunder material goods, but also to seize Christians as slaves. Barbary and Moroccan corsairs carried off hundreds of thousands of European men, women and children as slaves, mainly from coastal villages in southern Italy, Spain and Portugal. So feared were the corsairs in their heyday that many southern European villages were almost completely abandoned. While the precise location of Porches in those days is not known for sure, it is likely to have been near the coast and rather isolated. Historical records indicate that in 1560, Porches Velho –‘old’ Porches - as it is now known, shifted inland to the site of the present village.

In his 1841 book Corographia do Algarve , Baptista Lopes noted a fierce battle fought due east of Cabo Carvoeiro in August 1554 between a notorious corsair, Xaramet-Arraes,  and vessels of the Algarve coast guard. That action was probably not far from Nossa Senhora da Rocha – and Porches Velho.

Later that century, the British also became a menace along the Algarve coast. They were at war with Spain and Portugal was under Spanish control at the time. After famously “singing the King's beard” in a devastating attack on Spanish warships in the Bay of Cádiz in 1587, Sir Francis Drake patrolled the waters off the Algarve to intercept galleons supplying the 'invincible' Spanish Armada being assembled in Lisbon. The people of Porches and other villages along the coast may not have been much bothered by the British interception of Spanish vessels. What would have concerned them were Sir Francis Drake’s devastating attacks on fortifications at Baleeira, Sagres, Beliche and St Vincent.  Even worse was the destruction of Faro in July 1596 by a British fleet under the command of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex

The walled and naturally fortified headland of Nossa Senhora da Rocha, and that of nearby Cabo Carvoeiro and the watchtower at Alfanzina, would have allowed early warning of such attacks. The military fortification or castrum mentioned by both Afonso III and Dinis in the 14th century may have been manned in the 16th and 17th to give protection to the inhabitants of Porches.

Armação de Pêra would have been an easy landing spot for pirates and privateers had it not been for the fortress built there in the 16th century during the reign of João III. Situated at the eastern end of the cliffs, the fortress had a commanding view over the sea and the beach now used by local fishermen. Like Armação de Pêra today, Porches in the 16th century was under the jurisdiction of Silves. The people of Porches were able to count on the degree of security provided by Armação de Pêra’s fortress  – and others at Carvoeiro, Ferragudo and Praia da Rocha - right up until the corsair menace had been largely brought under control in the 18th century. 

By then there were other, less dramatic hardships to be endured on a daily basis. While it had been at the very nerve centre of the Age of Discovery, the Algarve was a remote and backward region. It was bypassed by the Age of Enlightment that in the first half of the 18th century had already brought great social change elsewhere in Europe. Conditions were so dire in places like Porches that many farm workers and fishermen migrated to other areas of Portugal and to Spain in search of better incomes to provide for their families back home.

And then, in 1755, Porches and the whole of the south coast were to face a natural catastrophe unequalled in the history of Europe.

Chapter 6 - REDUCED TO RUBBLE

The so-called Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 devastated not only Lisbon, but almost all the towns and villages along the entire southern coast of Portugal. In fact, the Algarve was much closer to the earthquake’s epicentre and suffered proportionally far more destruction than Lisbon.

In Porches, three main shocks and a series of aftershocks on the morning of 1 November, All Saints’ Day, totally destroyed 238 houses and severely damaged the parish church and the chapel of São Sebastião. The village and all outlying buildings and historical vestiges were almost totally demolished.

In Lagoa, the parish church, a fort, a major convent and many well-built houses were destroyed. Of the houses and religious buildings left standing, the majority were severely damaged.

In Silves, the castle walls, the cathedral, the town hall and other public buildings and most of the houses were destroyed. The remaining houses were damaged.

The tsunami that followed the earthquake overwhelmed Armação de Pêra. It killed 67 people, destroyed the fortress, the São António Church and half the houses. Most of the rest of the buildings in the town were badly damaged. The tsunami is believed to have measured up to 20 metres in height and penetrated 2.5 kilometres inland.

The most extensive flooding was in the area between Alvor and the Arade estuary at Portimão. A chapel on the beach by Alvor harbour was destroyed completely leaving no trace of its foundations. The floodwaters almost reached houses at an elevation of 30 metres 660 metres inland.

From the epicentre of the earthquake southwest of Lagos, The tsunami took 16 minutes to reach Cape St Vincent and 30 minutes to get to the Spanish border. With decreasing force, the effects of the tsunami were felt as far away as the Caribbean and the British Isles.

Measuring at least 8.5Mw, this was the worst earthquake known to hit Europe before or since. Overall, it reportedly killed up to 70,000 people. A more recent estimate, based on historical data, puts the death toll in Portugal at between 15,000 and 20,000, of whom more than 1,000 and perhaps twice that number lived in the Algarve. The proportion of the population who died in the Algarve was low relative to the capital city because most inhabitants here lived in single-storey houses in low-density communities and so there was a greater chance of speedy evacuation.

Such was the widespread carnage, it cost Portugal between 32% and 48% of its Gross Domestic Product - probably a lot more in the Algarve - making it the greatest natural catastrophe in Western Europe in financial terms. The Algarve economy did not emerge from the ruins of 1755 until the advent of tourism in the second half of the 20th century.

In the weeks and months after the calamity, inhabitants of Porches and elsewhere in the region had to live in makeshift arrangements while reconstruction got underway. Starvation was averted because subsidence farming could continue even though much labour had to be diverted into rebuilding homes.

Fishing, however, was so severely disrupted that Portugal’s dynamic prime minister, The Marquis of Pombal, nationalised the important sardine industry. He did this under a “Restoration of the Kingdom of the Algarve” programme.

By then, Pombal had introduced strict measures to deter looters, to bury the dead without delay and to lower the risks of pestilence. His government went on to impose price controls on basic foodstuffs such as cereals and olive oil. Among the many other emergency measures, Pombal sent extra troops to the Algarve to guard against those from outside the region who might seek to take advantage of the highly vulnerable situation on the south coast. He had in mind the old enemy, pirates and privateers from North Africa.

Stringent building regulations were introduced throughout Portugal after the earthquake and these have been frequently updated since then. Today, the Algarve has a comprehensive range of emergency services, mindful that large earthquakes have occurred in the centuries before and since 1755. In recent years, special emergency plans have been developed for various seismic catastrophe scenarios.

Professor David Chester of Liverpool University is among those who have researched and written not only about the impact of the earthquake on the Algarve and how the region recovered, but about the lessons to be learned.

He has noted: “Today the Algarve is one of Europe’s principal tourist destinations and a region vital to the Portuguese economy. The 1755 earthquake was not a one off event and the Algarve, which now houses a resident population of over 400,000 – a figure that more than doubles with tourists in the summer months - is highly exposed to earthquakes and tsunamis. An earthquake of similar size is viewed as a worse-case future scenario with a minimum estimated recurrence of 614 ± 105 years.”

Fault line and 1755 epicentre southwest of the Algarve