Portugal: Earthquakes, Alliances, and Wine

This past spring, I went to Portugal. I had always wanted to explore Portugal because, as a geographer, I had always been interested in the effects of a famous earthquake, and curious about the long-term relationship between the British and Portuguese. How had the intersection of nature and unexpected alliances affected this place?

I study natural hazards. I do not study the natural events so much as the societal worldviews that impact human responses to natural events. Lisbon sits at the boundary between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates. In 1755, an earthquake hit the city of Lisbon in which as many as sixty thousand people lost their lives and Lisbon was destroyed by the earthquake and the resulting tsunami and fire.  If you look at a map of Lisbon, the structure of the city resembles both Wellington, New Zealand and San Francisco, also sitting on fault lines.

The Lisbon earthquake took place at a pivotal boundary in intellectual history when Enlightenment views of science and nature were overtaking medieval, static views of the world. Portugal sat at the crossroads of these two worldviews. Zeilinga de Boer and Sanders describe the tension between these two worldviews and the impact of the earthquake in their book Earthquakes In Human History. They describe how, after the earthquake, the king sought the advice of his ministers. Pombal, one such minister, was a pragmatist and represented an enlightenment worldview. He demanded action—bury the dead, stop the looting, house the homeless, distribute food and water, and make plans for a rebuilt Lisbon.  The Catholic clergy believed the earthquake was God’s punishment for people being worldly and thought that the response should be pray and fasting in order to make peace with God rather than participate in reconstruction. Pombal was given almost limitless power by the king and became a virtual dictator. Though he eventually lost power, the alternative worldview, embedded in the nobility and the Catholic church, was never able to regain its previous influence.

In reading Molesky’s book, This Gulf of Fire, I became interested in another element of the story—the presence of a large English population in Lisbon called the British Factory. This British population were particularly critical of the medieval worldview that seemed to be fatalistic in its response to the earthquake. How did Portugal end up with this significant British population?

Britain and Portugal share similar geographic spaces. They both are on the western edges of Europe at the boundary of the continent and the Atlantic Ocean.  Britain is separated from Europe by the Channel while Portugal maintained its separate identity through the presence of mountains on its eastern, European-facing side. Thus, Britain and Portugal primarily face the Atlantic and became major maritime trading nations. Their alliance goes back to as early as the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1386 which was a military alliance.  The British also secured special privileges over time and eventually established a formal corporate body of traders known as the English Factory. And after the English split from the Catholic Church, they would also pressure Portugal for freedom of religion for their community within Portugal.

How have these connections played out?

Britain and Portugal have maintained a military alignment to a great extent. The British fought with Portugal against Napoleon in The Peninsular War (1807–1814) and British General Wellington became famous partially in his role to protect Portugal from the French. During WWII, Portugal remained neutral and played an important transit role for Jews fleeing Europe for England and other places.

Portugal remained a place that staved off the inquisition that raged in Spain for an extended period of time, maintaining a multi-cultural and multi-religious society. Religious orders were disbanded early, Jesuits were banned from the country, and Christians, Muslims, and Jews were able to co-exist together in communities for a longer period than in Spain. One wonders if their alliance with Britain gave them the ability to push back against Spain’s influence and whether the combination of earthquake and British alliance contributed to a more flexible form of Catholicism. After all, I’ve been told the Cursillo Movement originated in Portugal. Certainly the symbol of the movement, the rooster, is also the symbol of Portugal. De Colores.

And of course, the love of the British for port wine is well known. Port wine is produced in the Douro Valley of northern Portugal. The British imported wine from France, but when at war with France, they had to look elsewhere.  They looked to Portugal with whom they had a beneficial trade agreement. And the famous Pombal, the master after the Lisbon earthquake?  He also demarcated and established the Douro Valley as a designated port wine area to ensure consistency. For centuries port could only be aged, marketed and sold in Porto—thus the name “port.”

Earthquakes, Alliances, and Port Wine—all interconnected.

On my trip to Portugal, I visited Lisbon, the ancient city of Coimbra, and traveled the Douro River from Porto to Barca d’Alva, the furthest navigable point, on the border with Spain. We explored the border lands, traveling to Salamanca in Spain as well to Castillo Rodrigo, an early fortified site on the border.

Pombol planned and rebuilt Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755 on a rectilineal plan with unadorned facades, even limiting the height of churches. Belem, close to Lisbon, still has buildings that represent Lisbon prior to the earthquake.

Eduardo VII Park is in the city’s center, looking toward the waterfront. The park is named for King Edward VII of the United Kingdom who visited in 1903 to strengthen and reaffirm the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.

Coimbra, a Roman city with a university that stretches back to around 1300, has architecture and streets patterns from early Portugal.

The Douro Valley has long been devoted to vineyards and particularly to the making of port vine. Flat bottomed boats traditionally transported the wine down the river to Porto, but now it is taken in tanker trucks. The Douro River was a difficult river to navigate until the 1960s and 1970s, when dams and locks were built, which is what allowed us to travel the river all the way to the Spanish border.

The vineyards of the Douro really begin after passing through the Carrapatelo lock, which has the highest lift of 115 feet. Going through the lock is like going through a tunnel. Best not to think about the wall of water on the other side of the iron gate.

On the other side of the Carrapatelo lock you enter the region of vineyards and grapes, centered around Pinhao, where much of the port wine originates.

From Pinhao to Barka d’Alva, on the Spanish border, the land becomes more rugged, drier, and hotter. Olives dominate the hillside terraces. The canyons of this region formed a cultural and physical barrier to invasions.

Castella Rodrigo is an old fortress town on the frontier of Portugal. The town exhibits multi-cultural elements prior to the increasing influence of the Spanish Inquisition, with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian elements.

As you drive toward Salamanca, in Spain, you quickly rise up out of the valleys and into a flat plain, covered with grass fields with oak trees. The oaks produce acorns that are fed to Iberico, black pigs, a delicacy. In Portugal, fish dominate and as you reach the Spanish plain, beef and pork dominate. Another Roman city, Salamanca displays a contract between a Roman bridge and an art deco museum.

Traveling back down the Douro through the olives groves, and then the grape vineyards, we arrive at Porto which remains the center for port wine aging and exports.