Postcard From the Algarve - April 05
EASTER may have been a matter of hymns and eggs for you, but in Sao Bras it was the annual reminder of how the local men drove the English back to their ships in the 16th Century.
History students will remember that Sir Francis Drake, having sacked Cadiz, went onto to destroy the Portuguese port of Faro, seizing the Bishop of Faro’s library and handing it over to Oxford University where it became the Bodleian Library.
While Drake was stealing books, his sailors were pillaging the countryside round Faro. So the men of Sao Bras, armed only with staves, left the town to face the sailors, and drove them back to their ships. They returned in triumph marking their victory by garlanding their staves with the spring flowers that were then coming into bloom. |
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Thus, every Easter since, the victory has been celebrated by the men of Sao Bras processing round the town with elaborate flower arrangements on top of decorated poles. Of course, over the years the celebration has become more sophisticated. The men, (in a town in which a man only wears a suit to sell you insurance or refuse you an overdraft) all wear smart three pieces with collars and ties, and the streets are covered in flowers. (The women of Sao Bras get up early to arrange the flowers over the two miles of the processional route, but they no longer go into the surrounding hills to pick the flowers, which today are supplied by the local market).
The procession starts and ends at the church which replaced the one at which the original heroes gave thanks for their victory. The procession is not a silent one. Each group of 30 men has a leader who shouts, in Portuguese of course, ‘Christ is risen’ with the group responding ‘Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.’ Now, if you are a teetotaller, read no further. All this chanting is thirsty work, so each group of men have two or three bottles of Medronha (the local moonshine), which circulate during the procession, so the return to the church is somewhat less orderly. The present priest, who takes part in the procession, forbade this regrettable custom, so the men no longer drink within his view. The priest, a charitable man, possibly thinks that the two or three participants who drop out to sit or lie by the kerbside are overcome with religious emotion.
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