Today we went to the fair. The fair – actually several fairs – take place in various villages around here on different days of the week. It says something about the mind f the Portuguese people – to whose composition the Carthaginians made a considerable contribution, at least in the North – that the days of the week are not named after divinities of other abstractions but after fairs. Saturday and Sunday remain from the Roman calendar, but Monday is Segunda Feira – second fair – and Tuesday is Terca Feira, and the rest of the week is properly numbered as the type of fair it is.
There are fairgrounds in Portugal still that were established as part of the gift of some monarch or other, and which have stalls made of stone and with proper roofs. The fairs around here, in municipalities that used to have too few inhabitants to matter, are more ad hoc. I’m sure you pay a fee to sell there (not sure how much) but after that it’s a matter of getting two sticks on the ground and a bit of cloth overhead. Mind, these days there are a lot of beach umbrellas and other bits of civilization intruding. Also these days half or more of the merchandise offered is unlicensed Disney knock offs and illegal copies of movies (the Portuguese are almost as bad about copyright as the Chinese.) There are also piles of t-shirts, rolls of fabric, mountains of shoes. The merchandise offered falls into either the “fell off the back of a truck” category or the “discount outlet” category (which otherwise don’t exist in Portugal.) Tons of knock offs and brand name imitations.
The prices are reasonable, too, even for discount outlet merchandise, something that can’t otherwise be said for most of the stuff sold in Portugal.
And here and there, like survivals of the past you find stuff that would have been at the medieval fair, likely held in the same spot or close by: redware which I wish I knew I COULD afford to stick in my luggage (the weight is problematic) including a charming stewpot in the shape of a chicken body with the chicken wing and legs as the top; various hand painted wares; vegetables sold by the farmers; and, in vast crates, chickens, ducks and geese, including the young of the species. (It was hard to convince my son we didn’t need a pet goose.)
Overall, the atmosphere was something like what you might imagine a medieval fair might have been. Nothing of our sophisticated, bloodless shopping expeditions in an air conditioned mall, but probably how most of the world still shops.
No, I wouldn’t like to live here permanently, and the shopping is too haphazard (you’re never sure what you’ll find or for how much) but for the writer eye and the writer mind, it was a great experience. I’d done it before, of course, growing up here, but this time I took notes. I’m sure you’ll see the results in a future work.
According To Hoyt 