Destination: Sexta 13 in Montalegre

Celebrating bad luck

Invited by our landlady, Adela and I ran to the railway station after the last class on Friday to get to this little remote town, Montalegre.

This is situated in the north part of Portugal, very close to the Spanish border, so we took the train from Porto to Braga. From here we had to take a bus to Montalegre. We had exactly 40 minutes to get to the bus station.

Did we have time to visit Braga?

Yes! Just a bit…

We chose the way through the old town.

That is its exceptional gate!

The party

Cristina spent her teenage years in Montalegre and she revealed jokingly that the people here had always found a reason to celebrate anything, even Friday the 13th!

The most surprising aspect for me was that even the pharmacies windows were full of spider web and the old people, wearing creative costumes were wandering in the scary streets, looking for the diverse performances.

The area of witches

The next day we saw what a Portuguese village church looks like and found out how the local people fought against witch-hunt: they simply stopped going to the main square where the sorcerers were killed.

The Flintstones... @ their stone gate

Where I found out what lizards could do

In the old days, the girls went to take care of the crops and met some guy there, got ‘deflowered’ and put the blame on the lizards in front of their families. There is even a song about that!

Here is the link for the song and the dance

Every country you visit must have this kind of stories and I advise you to explore the less ‘mainstream’ places in order to discover them!

Thank you for reading!

Photo gallery