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Fajão Seen by one of us 

FAJAO VILLAGE OF SHALE

HISTORICAL WELFARE PEOPLE

Fajão is a small village on the hillside, facing the famous Penedos de Fajão with almost 900 meters of altitude, among pine trees, woods of rocks and carquejas. Its history and that of its people are the same as that of many other villages; Sobral Valado, Cabril, Vidual, Gralhas, Relvas, Ponte, Boiças, Ceiroquinho ...

The earth does not come on the map, it does not have great riches but its men and women, warm people, with hands calloused by the life and face marked by the sun and the cold.

As a child, when I went to Fajão with my grandparents, what struck me most was the reception of the population: - so Armindo you are here? You were well to see us, your grandmother must be happy! ... It was a great family, because when I asked my grandmother who was that lady in black that we found in the churchyard, or that boy who kicked the ball against the door of the Church, the answer was not late. It is our cousin, Ponte, daughter of Cousin António, and the young man is our cousin Zezito, son of cousin Manel da Castanheira.

And this story was repeated in the vacations of the following years ..... big family this family of Fajão said here for me ... Life there was difficult, some cabbages, some chickens, some eggs, goat's milk , the red and white vinhito and the bread made with maize flour. As I advance in this thought, which travels with me in time, the memory revives and I live the moment; the smells of the corral on the ground floor with half a dozen goats that helped warm the upstairs rooms where the family lived. Those still black dawns, awakened by the noise of wooden clogs, glimpsed a silhouette of a woman climbing the stone sidewalk with a bush of straw on her head, which twice made up the volume, the smell and the taste of that starling, which still today I ask myself what would have been exceptional in order to keep him in his memory for so long, the alembic next to the Church with the water running on one side and the little trickle of precious liquid with a strong, unmistakable smell that gave a shake to the head and a shivered in the face of those daring little boys who put the glass to their mouths.

But the land had a great collective practice, it was the corn grown in the mounds of the Ponte, transformed into flour in the collective mill, that the waters of Ceira moved in an interminable rap music. It was the corn meal bread with sardines or chorizo ​​made in the collective kiln of the village that the inhabitants of the lower helped to make on Mondays to the inhabitants of that they returned to the Wednesdays, it was also the nights of foliage and collective threshing where the people gathered, told each other stories and made and broke up dates. The meeting of the red spike was the occasion for a collective kiss that made the faces blush in a gesture of announcing hidden love.

That was where the money was passing, it was going on at other places.

There, exchange, mutual help was the daily bread. The door was always open to the neighbor, it was the way of life of these people who had an open relationship with the outside, without walls or artificial gates, sitting in the doorstep the neighbors talk ...

He lay down to work, to make roads and to bring the water to the fountains where the population came to supply. At each fountain there was a stool for those who wanted to quench thirst and a piece of soap if they had to wash their hands. The Liga Pró-Mejoramentos de Fajão, founded in June 1933, was always doing work. It was often attacked by unscrupulous rulers and Pampilhosa mayors who were more interested in the development of local trade than by solving the isolation of these small populations.

This was the case in the 1930s when the then mayor of Pampilhosa, fearing that the mandatory passage by Pampilhosa would be compromised, pressed the Minister of Public Works and the Autonomous Board of Roads to prevent the construction of the road that Electric Company of Beiras (to gain access to the construction of the Santa Luzia Dam) was interested in extending from the road that the Pró-Mejoramentos League had already carried out in much of Alto do Rolão towards Fajão. In May 1939, Mr. Augusto Dias, president of the Junta de Freguesia, wrote to the then Minister of Public Works: "... we read in the local weekly newspapers" Gazeta das Serras "and the" Comarca de Arganil " respectively on 20 and 28 April last, that the Pampilhosa Chamber of Deputies decided to officiate to you and to the President of the Autonomous Board of Roads, with the proposal of influencing the refusal of the reimbursement for this road. the Chamber such resolution? ..... and further ..... what reasons invokes the House to do so? It says that the Company harms with the extension that will build, the interests of the county. The Company will arrange a good service in 12 kilometers of mountain range by following the route on our road in 1,500 meters and then building another 6 to 8 kilometers .... to the Vidual, which is very useful for the parishes of Fajão, Cabril , Unhais and Vidual who live in isolation. the House calls for harming the county ... ".

It was, therefore, very clear that the mayor of Pampilhosa showed a total disdain for these villages in the mountains, with no water at home, no electricity, no roads, no medical post, isolated from urban centers and the county seat, Pampilhosa.

The ground floor was often used for animals, goats, goats, sheep, lambs ... The houses were built of shale stone and clay mortar, with boards of pine wood, without plaster outside, with the roofs on local stone slabs, with small windows in brown or pine wood, taller than wide, with two wings, three windows per doorway divided by pinazios, wooden doors, chestnut wood lintels, jambs built stone to rock , shale sills and wooden bolt.

Dwellings of simple and harmonious volumetry following the slope of the natural terrain, plastered and lime-colored inside white or cobalt blue, followed the narrow cobblestone streets, people, dogs, goats, chickens ..... cars do not...  

Fajão's celebrated tales ran from mouth to mouth and out of the village, traveled to Lisbon. Monsenhor Nunes Pereira's drawings and engravings illustrated the tales.

The most anxious went looking for a better life in the cities, Pampilhosa da Serra, Lousã and Coimbra. In Lisbon they were distributors of milk from door to door, commercial employees, restaurant employees and with labor effort without counting hours nor breaks were amealhando some to return one day to the earth, as would come from the 60s thousands of emigrants from all over the country to France, Belgium, Luxembourg ..... The first great transformations begin when some Fajaenses, who have piled up a few pennies, decide to invest in the land. One more floor is added to the house, the slabs of the roofs are replaced by red tile, the house is plastered to cement and painted white. Later the aluminum frames appear. Little by little that ancestral knowledge is diluted, the elders leave us and the younger ones seek other offices.

 But times change and men, with a kind of hereditary intrinsic force, like a gene that we carry in time, are there to start the circle again.

The House of Pampilhosa, with President Hermano d'Almeida, decides, far from the pettiness and quarrels of the past, and in a spirit of social, cultural and economic openness to give the village gallons of schist land, lady of the Penedos de Fajão.

At the beginning the restoration of the village revealed some constructive and architectural errors,

It seemed to be done with little care in relation to its history, materials and the need to seek to know the reason for things, the construction of our ancestors; streets were wrongly slipped, slippery (and the population growing old ...), with stones unsuitable for use.

Stones were placed on the façade (footings) more suitable for cover (see photo 6), the same mistake was made on monumental stairways and moreover in strategic places of the village, for example in the museum (see photo 6) and in the staircase near the old prison (see photo 7).

Here the stone is laid down instead of standing, and the choice of the wrong stone, unsuitable sashes and carpentry, plastic vases with flowers coming from outside, "impaled" windows .... it was a shame.

The dam in certain areas looks like a natural lake in the middle of the greenery, a pool where spring water flows, the dams of Ceira on the Bridge, Mr. Augusto, president of the Board proudly opening the doors of the Fajão Museum and the "Juiz de Fajão", a local restaurant, today without the presence of the unforgettable Zé Maria, but where Fatima continues the traditional cuisine capable of creating mouth water for a doctor from Coimbra or any ecologist from that Europe outside ... Chanfana Fajão, Ceira trout, Feijoada with Fajaense style, tijelada and honey brandy can be the dish of the day ...

Soon, there will be an inauguration, Fajão will be in the party and then say a friend and also comes from there ... these people are welcoming and waiting for you.

Grenoble May 2004

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