Arnaldo Saraiva - O Porto de Eugénio de Andrade

“When I visited Porto for the first time, on a distant evening, there in the courtyard of the Serra Convent, fascinated by all those houses that spilled down into the Douro River, their facades worn by the damp and viscous days, where remnants of sun gleamed in the windows and on the roofs, and the most imposing towers seemed to recede into the night, which had begun to fall. (…) I thought of the genuinely popular spirit of this land, to which was linked the highest of its virtues, its esprit de fronde, which earned the privilege of banishing the nobility from its walls and not allowing the Holy Office to hold more than one auto-da-fé here. What did it matter to me, at that moment, what Camilo had said about Porto? Could anyone, Camilo or anyone else, deny that disheveled and rough beauty that lay before their eyes?”