In days of old when knights were bold, the land-owning Calheiros family of Portugal would lend the support of its own small army to the country's kings to fight their wars. In return, the Calheiros, who have owned their estate in Portugal's northern Minho Valley since 1336, received privileges and status.
Today, life's a little different: Portugal has no monarchy, and the landed gentry are expected to fend for themselves like everyone else. This slide from grace and favor meant that over time many aristocrats withdrew from the countryside to their city residences, their grand mansions at best unmodernized, at worst boarded up. The present Count of Calheiros — Mr. Francisco to those who know him — decided that the rot must be stopped. A well-preserved 50-year-old who studied to be an electrical engineer before returning to his roots, the count found a way to preserve the aristocracy's past by adapting it to the present.
The deal is that an organization he presides over, Turihab (www.turihab.pt), navigates bureaucracies in Lisbon and Brussels to get grants to restore solares, or grand old houses, in return for which the owners must open part of them as tourist accommodation. The Count's own mansion, set among vineyards outside the town of Ponte de Lima, in an area known for its Vinho Verde wine, was one of the first to benefit. Today it offers nine bedrooms inside the house and six apartments in restored outbuildings. Visitors can dine with the count and taste local wines. "In 1980 my father gave me the house, being the oldest of four children," he says. "It was in a pretty bad state. When I told him that I was going to fix it in return for providing accommodation, he was not happy. He thought, 'There goes our privacy.' But I went ahead, and eventually he came around to the idea. In fact, when we had no guests he would ask where they were; he missed the company."
Since he opened Turihab's offices in Ponte de Lima in 1983, the Count has built a network of 97 houses across Portugal. As well as grand solares, they include quintas, or imposing farmhouses. "It's a compromise involving architecture, restoration, heritage and tourism," he says. "The aristocratic connection is an attraction. We are now showing other countries how to set up similar schemes." Recently he visited Hungary to outline the Portuguese experience for a similar plan that would also involve Slovenia and northern Bavaria.
In keeping with these more egalitarian times, the Count has adapted Portugal's heritage tourism to the local level. For the past 18 years he has been mayor of the village that bears his name, Calheiros, and has witnessed the decline of small-scale agriculture. Instead of seeking to prop up wine or dairy production via handouts, the Count set up another body that has plugged into an E.U. funding program called Leader II. Through this, villagers can apply to have a bedroom or two of their houses renovated and be incorporated into a network of rustic tourist stopovers.
The Count says this fits with his view that "I can be happy only if my neighbor is also happy. And this helps us to fix the population in the countryside, to stop the exodus. In these aldeias, or villages, we also encourage crafts and folklore and the sale of local products." This idea has also turned into a network. Under a Brussels-funded program connecting similar interest groups it is linked to traditional village accommodation schemes in Italy and the Netherlands.
The Count says the new life given to his own house has lifted people's spirits in Calheiros. "Before, it was a sad village, and perhaps people were embarrassed by the bad state of our house. Today, people see the house as an exuberant place. It has boosted the ego of the village. People there smile at visitors, offer them a drink of water. This is individual not mass tourism."
The Count's father died seven years after he handed on his house and is now buried in the family chapel there, as is a French soldier who fell in some ancient war. The Calheiros jewels are also interred somewhere on the estate, a precaution common in the old warring days. But the Count can't find them. "We have a list of them, but no map," he shrugs. What this 21st century aristocrat does have, via Turihab, is lists of unusual places to stay around Portugal, with maps. Prices depend on whether your mood, and wallet, are solar or rústica.
More information can be found at: www.center.pt or www.portuguese-portfolio.com
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