Chaptr 8 - 20TH CENTURY TWISTS AND TURNS

During the 40 years between the establishment of the military Estado Novo dictatorship in 1933 and the ‘Carnation Revolution’ of 25th April 1974, the state suppressed civil liberties and political freedom in order to remain in power. It firmly opposed any form of left-wing politics or independence for Portugal’s colonies in Africa. This oppression was felt mainly in the cities and larger towns of Portugal, but not even small communities like Porches were immune.

Salazar’s admirers, now as then, highlight the benefits of his dictatorship. The strong sense of nationalism he created engendered pride and self-belief, at least among the minority upper class. It re-established confidence within the Catholic Church. Sweeping reforms encouraged economic growth and social stability. The overbearing powers of the police and the justice system minimised crime. Much emphasis was placed on education. A state elementary school was built in Porches as in many small communities across the country where none existed before. For most, though, schooling lasted for only four years, from the age of seven to eleven. Only the brightest pupils from well-to-do families were able to go on to higher education in the towns and cities. And so a new generation of generally under-educated and in many cases still barely literate young people emerged.

Salazar’s detractors say that while landowners and business leaders flourished at home, a large number of young people were obliged either to serve in the armed forces to maintain Portugal’s foreign territories or to emigrate and seek lowly work in democratic countries, such as France, the UK and Canada.

Throughout the chaos of the First Republic and during most of the tightly controlled years of the Second, the parish of Porches remained a quiet backwater. The village was even smaller than it is today. Narrow streets such as Rua da Igreja, Travessa da Igreja, Rua António Joaquim Cabrita, Rua da Praça, Rua Directa and Rua do Rocio were cobbled with characteristic Portuguese calçadas. The streets were lined with small, terraced cottages devoid of electricity, running water or bathrooms. Here and there stood a few relatively large houses with gardens and other amenities.

The resident population of the parish during the first half of the 20th century was only a little higher than in the previous century. It fluctuated between 1,300 and 1,400, dipping in 1960 to 1,265. There were a couple of small, dark, grocery shops in the village. A small post office with a rare telephone close to the church was kept busy, not only as a conduit between local residents and far-flung relatives, but by selling bread.

Agriculture was still by far the principle economic activity. Vineyards supplied grapes for winemakers. Almonds, olives and figs were produced in some quality, carobs to a lesser extent. The sandy soils were not ideal for cereals but some barley and a little wheat were grown, as were a variety of vegetables. Livestock were raised on a small-scale for their meat, or as draught and pack animals. Horses, mules and donkeys helped plough the land and transport goods and people.

Farming started to decline in the early 1960s because of inefficient farming methods, the dwindling size of farms due to the inheritance system, and young people turning away from working the land to take up easier and better-paid employment in the towns. The decline was hastened by the profound change in the economic and social structure of the Algarve brought about with the advent of tourism. Like Albufeira, the next fishing village to the east, and Carvoeiro and Praia da Rocha to the west, Armação de Pêra was “discovered” by a few intrepid visitors from abroad. Tourism would eventually transform the coastal skyline as well as the economic focus of the area.

Armação de Pêra in 1949

The first to recognise and develop Armação de Pêra’s foreign tourist potential was a Portuguese couple called Oliveira Santos who were living in Lisbon but wanted to move to the Algarve. Francisco Oliveira Santos was an artist. Neither he nor his wife, Maria Margarida, had any experience of the hotel business, but in 1960 they commissioned an architect to draw up plans for a 50-room quality hotel on the cliff top at the western end of the long beach. It is thought they were able to get special permission to build so close to the sea, and receive help with funding, only because they had a friend who was close to Salazar. In those days, Salazar’s personal approval and backing was needed for all important projects throughout the country.

Armação de Pêra was a small, nondescript village with narrow streets and a few cafés. Remarkably, besides the ruins of an old fort, the beachfront road boasted a casino where men could gamble while their womenfolk crocheted and kept an eye on the youngsters dancing. Also on the beachfront were a few private houses, one with two storeys, but certainly nothing as grand as a hotel. The area overlooking the sea now occupied by serried ranks of high-rise apartment blocks was just farmland.

Having named their hostelry the Hotel Garbe (it is now  the Holiday Inn Algarve), Francisco and Maria Margarida Olivira Santos opened in 1962 when there were only four other hotels in the whole of the Algarve. There was no regional airport at the time. Access to the Algarve was by a slow train or along a narrow, long and winding road from Lisbon, or by ferry across the Guadiana River from Ayamonte in what was then a remote corner of Andalusia.

In the early years, most of the Hotel Garbe’s guests were British. “Those were the great days where almost everybody would come down to the bar for cocktails before dinner,” recalled Jacqueline Franco, the hotel’s first reception manager. The gentlemen wore smoking jackets and the ladies long, chic dresses.

The cutlery was Cristopfle from France and the china Vista Alegre from Viseu. The bedcovers were hand embroidered. The tariff for a room and full board for two in summer was between 487 and 772 escudos per night (equivalent to €2.40 and €3.85).

Astra Almeida d’Eca, wife of the first professional photographer to take pictures of the hotel, remembers: “The bar at that time was small, but all along the front of the hotel was a wide veranda that also served as a bar. Late into the summer nights, you could enjoy the sight and sound of elegant people who just felt good. On festive days, there used to be fireworks in the village and from the veranda, you could enjoy the show. It was all set in an almost tropical garden that went right down to the beach - but later when the pool was built the garden had to go!”

The hard-working Mrs. Oliveira Santos took charge of the hotel, allowing her husband to get on with his painting. Known to all as Dona Guida, her day started with a shopping trip to Portimão market at 5am. If you wanted the best fresh vegetables and fruit you had to go to Portimão rather than Lagoa or any other closer market - and you had to go early. During the day, Dona Guida ran things from the hotel’s lower ground floor. In the evenings, she and her family and friends, a group of ten or more, would eat in the main dining room at a big round table in a corner from where she could keep an eye on things.

The staff all knew they could come to Dona Guida with their problems. She always managed to come up with a solution. She had a small crèche created so that children could be looked after while their mothers were working in the hotel. Some of the younger members of staff fell in love, married and had children. Dona Guida was often asked to be a godmother.

At the start of the building boom in the Algarve in the mid-1960s, the Hotel Garbe’s guests often included land speculators from abroad. Local landowners were keen to sell because farming was on the way out and their land was of no interest to anyone other than newcomers from outside the region who wanted to build. There were times when seven or eight guests at the hotel would be vying for the same property. “Great fun for us,” recalls Jacqueline Franco.

The Hotel Garbe had two motor boats, which were booked either for water-skiing or for trips to nearby grottoes. It was probably from one of these boats in 1966 that George Ansliy, an Englishman staying at the Garbe, picked out a pristine spot on the cliff tops above the tiny beach of Praia da Gaivota, a little west of the hotel. He bought a number of small plots of rough land and melded them into a single 11-hectare site with the idea of developing it into a luxury estate similar to the finest he had admired in Sardinia. To begin with, Ansliy created a few villas in prime frontline positions overlooking the sea, and a restaurant of a standard previously unmatched in the Algarve.

Ansily’s son-in-law - Lara’s father – was a Portuguese artist called José Almeida Araújo. He designed the first buildings and gave them soft, rounded lines at a time when virtually every building in the Algarve was square or rectangular. Instead of the standard white of virtually every other building in the region, Ansily and Araújo had the walls of the complex painted the colour of sand to give the impression that they had been hewn out of the surrounding terrain. The exclusive retreat was renamed Vilalara in honour of Ansily’s newborn grandchild, Araujo’s daughter. 

Vilalara’s innovative elegance in such a spectacular and private location appealed to the rich and famous. Early individual villa buyers included the actress Eva Gabor, the British socialite Lady Annabel Goldsmith and the distinguished British politician Lord Duncan Sandys. An entrepreneur living in Switzerland, Leon Levy, stopped by for a holiday and was so hugely impressed that two years later he acquired Vilalara and turned it into a “private club”.

When it came to adding blocks of low-rise apartments, the original architectural theme was picked up and developed by the Algarve architect Ramiro Laranjo. It came to be regarded as a “hidden utopia” that provided the highest degree of exclusivity for the most demanding of clients.

Lady Goldsmith is reputed to have always brought a butler with her on visits to Vilalara. She enjoyed swimming in the sea in front of the estate but was so concerned about excessive sun on her skin that she would never lingered on the beach. When swimming, she wore a long-sleeved blouse over her bathing costume.  

Eva Gabor and her fifth husband, the American aerospace industrialist Frank Jameson, senior vice-president of North American Rockwell, spent their honeymoon at Vilalara in 1973. Their holiday home was eventually bought by Winston Churchill Jr, grandson of the wartime prime minister. The German playboy Gunter Sachs, who famously married Bridget Bardot, greatly admired Vilalara too. It is said that the Aga Khan liked it so much he borrowed the concept for a resort in Sicily.

All this was two decades before Vilalara became renowned as Portugal’s first thalassotherapy centre and went on to attract personalities as diverse as former US President Jimmy Carter,  Princess Diana and world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.

In 1964, two years before Ansliy took that inspirational boat ride, a honeymooning Dutchman and his German wife were driving back from  a visit to Nossa Senhora da Rocha when they saw a vende se (for sale) sign on the side of the road close to Porches village. They called the number on the sign and were able to speak in German to Marilia, the younger daughter of  the owner of the land, Artur Bravo. As the owner of vineyards and two wineries, he was one of the few people in the area who had a phone.

The next day the Dutch-German couple looked closely at the property for sale, loved it and decided to buy. It was the beginning of a long and close association with Porches for Paul and Eva Schelfhout.

The Schelfhouts built half of their house on their Porches property in 1968, the other half in 1971 when they came to live permanently. In October 1972, they opened a school with 12 mostly British pupils in guest rooms in their home. This was the beginning of an independent institution that six months later moved into a nearby purpose-built premises as the International School of the Algarve. It grew to become the region’s largest private secondary school, with nearly 1,000 pupils aged between three and eighteen in separate English and Portuguese-speaking sections.

Another foreign couple who founded an enterprise in the 1960s that was to leave a lasting impression on the Porches community were Patrick and Oonagh Swift from Ireland. They remarked that when they first came to live in the Algarve in 1962, the way of life did not seem to have changed much since medieval times. Swift, then in his mid-thirties, was already a respected painter and literary figure in Ireland and London.

His Algarve canvasses reflected in a most distinctive personal way his love of the natural beauty of the local countryside.

Swift’s friendship with the Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas led to both a deeper understanding of Portuguese history and culture, and a passion for resurrecting the ceramic art tradition that had existed in the region in medieval and even ancient times. Swift and de Freitas opened their first joint studio in 1968 in a cottage on the edge of the village of Porches. It is known as the Olaria Pequena.

With demand for their work growing, Swift and de Freitas moved into a larger studio, which they called the Olaria Algarve – Porches Pottery. There they trained local artisans and continued to hand-paint old designs and motifs on ceramic plates and panels that soon became collectors’ items. The pottery is still today under the direction of two of Patrick and Oonagh Swifts’ daughters.