Mourish Castle, Sintra

Built by the moors, it was conquered in 1147 by D. Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal.

It is located in Sintra, a village part of world heritage, located on top of a mountain and very close to Lisbon. It is the perfect place to go to runaway from busy Lisbon at weekends. There are many other nice places in this village, but I will save it for future posts.

Miguel Sousa Tavares won a literature prize in Italy

I guess most portuguese people know already that "Equador" is a masterpiece of contemporary portuguese literature. The good news is that it is starting to be recognized as such also abroad.

Miguel Sousa Tavares has just won an important literature prize in Italy. This prize (Grinzane Cavour 2006) is the most important prize for foreign literature in Italy and has been attributed in previous years to important names as JM Coetzee, Carlos Fuentes or Mario Vargas Llosa.

Could we possibly be on the way to a second literature Nobel, after Jose Saramago in 1998? If Miguel Sousa Tavares continues to write such good novels, who knows...

In the mean time, I look forward to his new novel, apparently still in the process of being written.

Mafalda Arnauth

You might wonder: why Mafalda Arnauth? Why Mafalda Arnauth, if everybody who likes FADO, first of all mentions Amalia, maybe then Mariza and only then all the "others".

Well, maybe because she is the author of one of my favourite songs ("Meus Lindos Olhos" (My Beautiful Eyes)). Maybe because it was only because of that song that I started to find fado an interesting music, that I feel like listening to, especially when I'm away from home, I don't know why...maybe simply because I have portuguese genes. :)

She has a new cd, called "Diario", which you can find at iTunes Music Store. If you feel like discovering this traditional portuguese song called fado, download some of the songs. Unfortunately, the song I was mentioning can't be found there.

Fernando Pessoa 3

I was very happy to see, when I went to a bookshop in Oxford, that Fernando Pessoa writings are widely translated in english.

I found two books: one was a collection of his most important poetry and the other was "O livro do desassossego (The book of disquietness)" written under the name of his semi-heteronymous Bernardo Soares. I guess his caracter and his writings are certainly unique around the world.

When reading a book about his clinical case, I found out that besides his 3 heteronymous and 1 semi-heteronymous, there was another heteronymous which was never shown in his famous writings. Apparently, he created a feminine character as a way to escape his feminine side. Unfortunately, the writings were very basic and show a person who is mentally very sick. This girl is 19 years old, suffered "paraplegia" and wrote about an impossible love for someone that she observed every day while she was seating at her window.
While I was happy to know more about his work, I was sad to see that psicologically he was very disequilibrated before he died.

Sporting Clube de Portugal

Ok, ok. I know: just last saturday I was saying that I didn't give a sh.... about whether Sporting would win or loose against Benfica. Like Pedro renounced Jesus three-times, I renounced a couple of times my football team this weekend. :)
And, worse than that, I'm only writing this post because Sporting won (3-1...we gave them a lesson!) ..... shame on me!
The truth is Sporting will always be my team, no matter how many times I get disappointed of us loosing a game or not winning the championship (or loosing in the final of UEFA cup :( ) .
And, after all, let's be honest: isn't the green color much more beautiful than Benfica's red or Porto's blue?
Appologies accepted? ;)