Setúbal is the first destination of a literary tourism route suggested by the writer José Luís Peixoto with five other authors that makes known, on an online platform, the twelve places in the country described by José Saramago in the book “Viagem a Portugal”.

The project “Viagem a Portugal Revisited”, promoted by Turismo de Portugal and the José Saramago Foundation, as part of the celebrations of the centenary of the birth of the only Portuguese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, reconstructs the places he visited between October 1979 and July 1980 and originated the book “Viagem a Portugal”.

In the chapter that integrates Setúbal, with the title “Between Mondego and Sado, stopping everywhere”, José Saramago mentions the mysterious aspect of Quinta da Bacalhôa.

On the other hand, Portinho da Arrábida, he asserts, “is like a nail of sand, a moon arch fallen in times of closer proximity”, where “the traveller, who has no time left, would be foolish to resist”.

In Setúbal, “Bocage, the one with a short life” was born, immortalized “at the top of that column, facing the Church of São Julião”.

Another church, that of Jesus, integrated into the convent of the same name, “has to be the most beautiful monument in the city” of Setúbal.

“The pleasure would be to follow along the banks of the Sado. But the river opens a wide and irregular estuary, the waters go deep into the land”, (d)writes José Saramago.

COD
Quinta da Bacalhôa is one of the references in Setúbal by José Saramago in the book “Journey to Portugal”, a space in which “few things are as mysterious as the placement of its doors, where one constantly expects to see someone appear”.

PORT
In Portinho da Arrábida, understood as the coastal strip that also includes Praia do Creiro, the traveller, after entering the water, “rests on his back in the subtle back-and-forth, and dialogues with the very high cliffs that, seen this way, seem to lean towards the water and fall into it”.

Bocage
The sadino poet, immortalized in a statue, “must be asking himself why they put him there, so alone, he who was a bohemian man, of improvised verses in taverns, of tumultuous loves in rented beds, of much feud and wine".

JESUS

The writer also highlights the Church of the Convent of Jesus, with a “simple and harmonious” façade, with “excellent tiles” and for which an altarpiece made up of 14 panels was painted, “a set of exceptional importance for the understanding of Portuguese painting of Five hundred".

See the project page IN THIS LINK

SOURCE: Nov-Dec '22 Events Guide - Routes