Chapter 7 – RECOVERY AMID UPHEAVAL

Porches Velho, with its roots in medieval or even ancient times, had been abandoned in the mid-16th century and never rebuilt on the same site. The relocated village of Porches, which had existed for almost two centuries before being destroyed by the great earthquake, was rebuilt after the calamity and then expanded where it is situated today. This took place gradually between the second half of the 18th and the first half of the 20th centuries.

Population and habitation records, based on counts by priests rather than official censuses, suggest that in 1722 there were 483 people living in 127 dwellings in the parish as a whole. The records of the 1755 earthquake devastation show 238 dwellings destroyed – and it was a century before this number was exceeded. In 1802 there were said to be a population 643 living in 147 homes. An official census in 1864 showed that the population has risen to 1,106, In 1900 it was up to 1,319 more thah 300 homes and in 1911, there were more than 1,400 inhabitants in 320 homes.   

Eighteen years after the earthquake, Lagoa left the jurisdiction of Silves. Its official status having been elevated from village to town, it became a municipality in its own right. It was not until 1834 that Porches was transferred from the municipality of Silves to that of Lagoa. This ended an association with Silves that had spanned four and a quarter centuries. During that time, Silves had deteriorated considerably from its halcyon days as the Moorish capital of the region.

When the English writer Robert Southey visited in 1801, Silves far from impressed him. He was unable to find lodgings and could not get into the castle because the key was held by an official in Portimão. He described Silves’ 16th century Gothic cathedral as “an old and unremarkable church.” In a charnel house, “I saw skeletons almost whole, with ligaments entire and skulls with the hair on,” he wrote. “Is it because they bury all in the church and are obliged often to empty the vaults? The custom of covering them only with wood is very disgusting.”

Meanwhile, the granting of municipal status to Lagoa had been done in the name of D. José I. The power behind the throne at the time was the highly controversial Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, who had recently been made Marquis of Pombal.

Having acquired enormous prestige from his forthright leadership and organisational skills in handling the terrible aftermath of the earthquake, Pombal went on to become a ruthless dictator. He swept aside all political opposition in implementing bold and wide-ranging economic and social reforms. In strengthening the role of the state, Pombal persecuted the Jesuits and curtailed the activities of the Inquisition. He introduced an ecclesiastical system in Portugal that has been described as “a sort of disguised Anglicanism.”  

Although a despot, Pombal was respected throughout the land as an innovative, no-nonsense statesman. Even among many in the clergy, his leadership qualities continued to be admired until his death from leprosy in 1777.

The extremely difficult years for Porches and Portugal as a whole in the second half of the 18th century continued through out the 19th and into the 20th. In sharp contrast to its position as the world’s main economic power between the 15th and 17th centuries, Portugal underwent economic and social upheaval as it became engulfed in conflict between its ally, Britain, on the one hand, and France and Spain on the other. This led to successive Spanish and French invasions, the capture of Lisbon by French forces in 1807 and the Peninsular War that lasted almost six years.

The Portuguese royal family and most of the nobility were living in exile in Rio de Janeiro having fled from forces of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Brazil, which had long been a colony, was given kingdom status in what became known as ‘the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve.’ The year after D. João VI’s return to Lisbon following the Peninsular War, Brazil declared its independence.

By then, relations in Portugal had been shattered between the Catholic Church and revolutionary liberals who vowed to curb the clergy’s powers. The death of João VI in 1826 led to a crisis of royal succession and a six-year civil war between the liberals under João’s eldest son, Pedro, and authoritarian absolutists under Pedro’s younger brother, Miguel. The absolutists had the backing of landowners and the clergy, but it was the liberals who emerged from the civil war victorious. Alexandre Herculano, a liberal intellectual who became a highly acclaimed novelist and Portugal’s best-known historian, blamed much the country’s “decadent” past on the Church. Now, he said, Portugal was in the process of being “reborn.”

Throughout this tumultuous period, the original parish church, the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora de Encarnaçao, continued to be by far the most prominent building in Porches. It was during the long drawn out, dogged and determined recovery from the ruins of the earthquake that parish churches like the one in Porches were rebuilt to regain or surpass their former splendour. 

Built on its present site in the 16th century, the earthquake destroyed much of the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora de Encarnaçao. Many believed it had been as a result of the ‘wrath of God’ rather than a natural phenomenon. All that remained was the chancel, the focal part of any church where the altar is located. Its ribbed arched ceiling survived. Today, the walls are still decorated with tiles from the 17th century. The altarpiece of the high alter has gilded carvings and images dating from the first half of the 18th century.

The church’s west-facing main doorway in neoclassical style, the large window above, decorated with a royal crown, and the single nave flanked by four chapels were all added in the 19th century thanks to funds donated in 1882 by António Joaquim Cabrita, a major landowner in the area. Cabrita was born of a Porches family in 1807 and baptised in the parish church. He became a wealthy bachelor and after supporting the church for many years, made his final bequest in a will signed in the Lagoa notary in 1879. He died in 1881. 

As in rural areas throughout the Algarve and the rest of Portugal, illiteracy was still normal among the people of Porches in the 19^th and early part of the 20th century. The power of the monarchy and the Church were seen as the major causes for the chronic lack of education. The mood became ever more strongly anti-clerical and in favour of left-wing republicanism that perceived the monarchy to be inefficient and corrupt. The most extreme of republicans wanted both the monarch and the Catholic Church abolished. Following the assassination in Lisbon of Portugal’s penultimate king, D. Carlos, Portugal’s First Republic was proclaimed on 5th October 1910.  

Following France’s example, a Law of Separation was introduced to disestablish the Church. Divorce, civil marriage and secular cemetery burial were all legalised. Church property was confiscated and nationalised; religious orders were banned; the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal; priests were forbidden to teach; neither prayers nor crucifixes were allowed in schools; the wearing of clerical garb in the streets was prohibited; so was the ringing of church bells and the staging of religious festivals. Times had indeed changed. The Catholic Church was no longer the persecutor. It had become the persecuted.

Republicanism espoused strong democratic principles and greatly strengthened the role of parliament but it failed to live up to expectations. The people were no better off or any freer than before. Disillusionment led to yet more political strife. This was further aggravated by deep division between liberals and conservatives over whether Portugal should take sides in the First World War.

Violent street clashes, political assassinations, military coups, currency devaluation and economic depression eventually ushered in a military dictatorship in 1926. This gave rise to Portugal’s Second Republic - or the Estado Novo (the‘New State’) as it became known. From 1933, even small and relatively remote places like Porches found themselves subjected to a new form of stability imposed under the political leadership of António de Oliveira Salazar.