In Cercedo, a few kilometers away from Alturas do
Barroso, every year the people gather around a small chapel in the middle of the mountain, promising great devotion in
honour of Our Lady of the Mountain, who in all regions is famous
for answering to the most inner prays. When the divine obligations are over, the lunch is served for the groups of people spread under the trees, in
between stones.
In the improvised market one can sell clothes, fruit and other stuff, and there is also little restaurants for the
most resistant. The festival continues with dancing and
singing until the sunset.
In Esposende, on August 24th,
people celebrate the Saint Bartolomeu do Mar, a big pilgrimage
which brings many devoted people to the
beach for the holly bath.
The tradition says that one should
walk under the Saint´s Statue, and then, with a black chicken in his lap, takes 3, 5 or 7 (always an uneven
number) walks around the church.
Finally, parents and hired swimmers take the children up and plunge them, the same number of times, into the waters of the sea so that they can escape from some diseases like stuttering and epilepsy.
On the worship day to Our Lady of Pena, in Mouçós, Vila Real,
it´s the same as in all pilgrimages: the saints and the little
shepherds, the music bands, the high mass, the saint´s pictures for a
coin, the food and drink little shops, the stages for the rock bands… In
the vast are of the pine forest, 25 thousand of people gather around to
watch the biggest wooden framework to carry the saint´s statue,
catapulted to the sky by a huge water crane. The scene seems to
supersede the Our Lady of Aparecida´s case, from Lousada, in the name of
a record in the Guinness world book of records.
In Amarante the June´s festivals are dedicated to St.
Gonçalo.
Disputed monk between Benedictines
and Dominicans, is worshiped by the people and is known as the old ladies matchmaker, wonder-worker and merry fellow...
All these pilgrimages together, year after year, join
thousands of people, and in these festivals there are many
wonderful sacred and profane rituals which are mixed together and complete themselves in an imaginary expression of faith
and tradition.
As a proof of this we have the Boys’ Festival, in
Constantim (Miranda do Douro). In here, after many days of the
typical entertainment of the winter Carnival, and at the end of a morning, in which they have been persecuting the virgin daughters of the village, the bagpipe sounds divinely
inside the holly place and it brightens the mass. And at the end
of the procession, right there, in front of the church, the
pauliteiros dance and the disguised couple rehearse without chastity the traditional mating gestures…
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