Walking Peneda-Gerês National Park: Community Lifestyles in the Mountain Villages

When you visit the traditional villages of Portugal’s mountainous Peneda-Gerês National Park, it can feel as though you’re stepping back in time.

Until the 1960s, these remote villages had no need to lock their doors, nor did they have electricity or indoor plumbing. To survive in these isolated places, with harsh weather and geographical conditions and limited resources, working in partnership with your neighbours is essential. While modern conveniences have brought independence to the mountain communities, the bonds between locals are strong, even if no one uses the communal bread oven anymore.

Although most of these villages are now connected to the wider world by tarmac roads, this is only a relatively recent thing. Go back just 40 years and instead of a 40-minute drive to the nearest town, the journey could take all day, along worn stone roads. Longer still if you were doing this on foot rather than by ox-drawn cart or mountain horse.

Many of the hiking trails through the Peneda-Gerês National Park follow the former thoroughfares between villages – ancient stone paths that are often lined with moss-covered stone walls and oak. Within the villages themselves, although you will certainly see signs of modern life, the vestiges of a more isolated lifestyle are still in evidence.

 

Community threshing areas

Back in the days when these mountain villages really were remote and had to be self-sufficient in order to survive, the community spirit was strong and resources were shared between local families. For example, most villages built their grain stores (espigueiros) around a large flat rock that was used as a communal threshing floor and deposit for various crops throughout the year, according to a strict calendar. The villages of Lindoso, Soajo and Parada are all fine examples of this phenomenon – you’ll find 67 granite grain stores just in the area around Lindoso Castle.

Village laundry tanks

Another shared facility that is common, not only in the Peneda-Gerês National Park but in villages throughout Portugal, is the community laundry tank. Before the days when almost every household has a washing machine, the village women would carry their load, piled into baskets carried on the top of their heads, to the tank and exchange gossip and jokes with their neighbours as they scrubbed away.

 

Free water supply

You’ll also see public water fountains, again another meeting point before homes had piped water. Even now, the householders of Lindoso receive free water, albeit from taps within their bathrooms and kitchens instead of the local fonte da tornada.

 

Community bread ovens

Bread was, and still is, a staple for the Portuguese diet, especially in self-sufficient communities. Most village cottages are tiny, with insufficient space for a bread oven so another common practice in these tight-knit communities was to build a large oven for use by the whole village. The type of grains and the low temperatures in these parts meant that even in the days before preservatives, a loaf could stay fresh for several days so families would take turns to bake their bread for the coming days. The warmth from these ovens would attract not just neighbours keen for a chat but also beggars hoping for scraps and passing tradesmen or other travellers.

Soajo village has an interesting pillory in its central square, which serves as a reminder of how outsiders were treated with suspicion in less certain times. The anthropomorphic figure represents a man with a loaf of bread on his head. According to local legend, a newcomer was only welcome in town for as long as takes a freshly baked loaf to cool down (about an hour). These days, of course, visitors are encouraged.

 

Watermills

While the land around the mountain villages is not suitable for for large scale agriculture – today it is manly used for rearing sheep and goats and grazing cattle – the villagers built terraced fields in order to grow their wheat and corn and other crops. Of course, in order to turn those grains into flour, you need a mill. And without electricity, the best way to power one is with running water. All villages had water mills, whether privately or collectively owned, that served the local families.

In Parada, these are located above the community laundry, while in Soajo, they are on a hill above the village. This uphill journey required transport in the form of ox-drawn carts and you can see the grooves worn into the stones on the way to the mills. Although no longer in use, the ingenious system of levadas (water channels) that created sufficient power to work the heavy grindstones is still visible.

 

Community post boxes

While not exactly an example of community lifestyles, you’ll see rows of old plastic post boxes in village squares. In villages where there were no street names or house numbers, and tiny passageways between clusters of cottages, it’s not surprising that the postal service was not right to the door. These post boxes are still in use, sometimes for the daily local bread delivery, which comes every day now that the community bread ovens are defunct.

 

To discover the community lifestyle in the mountain villages of the Peneda-Geres National Park we created a walking tour that invites you to experience the charms of this ancestral way of life.

Learn more HERE.

 

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