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Friday, November 10, 2000
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Off the Beaten Track
"I can be happy only if my neighbor is also happy"
Missing family jewels are the last things on the mind of a modern Portuguese count
By ROD USHER
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 simi |
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