Story

In the visit to Gondiães January 2012, a stick marked the intervals between the sets of bread, ribs and popes at the tables. Each group then distributed these foods among the participants. Preparation brought together return residents and emigrants.

The piece of bread was called carolo. The account presents the protection of São Sebastião as a legend of origin, without documentation that fixes the beginning of the party.

In Casares, a wooden bridge integrated the real road to Braga and communications with Trás-os-Montes, according to the memory of 1758. Before the movement, the vicar defended building it in stone. It was a request, not the confirmation of a work.

The source distinguishes this passage from small walkways made with a wooden beam, for pedestrians. Different paths responded to different uses.

The passage not only served the village. The vicar describes a public road and very frequented, linking Braga to the term of Basto and Trás-os-Montes. The bridge emerges, as a local point of a larger network. The recommendation to replace it by chanting shows the author to assess a need, besides inventing what existed.

In the same rivers, the water moved mills and was used by farmers in the fields. The crossing, grinding and watering appear in the same portrait of the territory. A bridge can be read by what it allows to do: reach another place, maintain a communication or approximate works separated by water.

In the Old Village of Toninha, the municipal inventory proposes occupation between the 13th and 16th centuries. It compares the constructive remains with other serran settlements, including examples in Lindoso and the abandoned village of Juriz in Montalegre. Already the plague that would have caused the people to leave belongs to the popular tradition. They are different paths to know the place: comparing buildings and collecting memories.

There is a third clue: the Investigations of 1258. The inventory proposes that the village may correspond to one of the ten couples then assigned to Juguelhe. It is a probable identification presented by the author, not an equivalence demonstrated. Comparisons with other places help to formulate this interpretation.

Imagine three cards on the table: the buildings, the document of 1258 and the narrative of the plague. Each opens a different question. What forms are repeated in other villages? What places appear in the document? What explanation conveyed the tradition? The discovery begins by crossing these clues without confusing them.

The account of St. Pedro of Alvite distinguishes the civil subjects, linked to the Abbot and the convent of Refojos, from the criminals, attributed to the municipality judge of Cabeceiras. The Couto thus had an organization that is not limited to a line on the map. It's a historical description, no correspondence with the current administration. There is an important territorial distinction: the answer places Petimão in the term of Celorico of Basto. The skills of the Couto are described for other places, avoiding reading the entire parish as a single jurisdiction.

In the announcement of the restoration of six tocheiros, in 2014, the Municipality describes pyramidal structures with three decorated faces, gold leaf, floral motifs and heads of angels. It proposes a probable assignment to Frei José Vilaça and a conclusion between 1764 and 1767. The source presents this authorship as hypothesis, distinct from the confirmed assignment of the furniture of the sacristy.

The news also included the cross of the main altar between the pieces under treatment at the Santa Bárbara Workshops in Porto. The intervention was financed by a patron. This episode links the conservation of the heritage to the specialized work and the support of those who assume its costs.

According to the study of 1995, the chalice remained in Refojos until the mid-16th century and went to the College of São Bento de Coimbra, in the context of the work of Frei Diogo de Murça. After the extinction of religious orders in 1834, he passed to the Treasure of the Sé de Coimbra. The record of the Machado de Castro Museum documents its current connection to the collection. This journey adds a material history to the relationship between Refojos and Coimbra.

The municipal guide of the villages highlights in Cunhas a nucleus of concentrated old houses and the manor of Teixeiras Pereiras. It is a reference to the architecture of the village, without indication of access to the interior of the building.

The same guide tells two legends: one associates the name of Cunhas to a soldier called Cunha de Pau, linked to the fight against the Moors; another says that Santa Senhorinha had house in the locality. They are narratives of popular memory. The publication does not present them as proven events nor allows to locate a house of the saint.

The municipal inventory links the Arame Bridge of Padroselos to the tin exploration. The form Po.27 describes iron, wood and ruin, without filling the date of survey.

The Freixo Bridge, no Torneiro, integrated the path between Cunhas and Torneiro. The record Po.28 records granite and no guards. In Po.29, the Arames Bridge over the Beça appears with a concrete board supported by five pillars. These two chips are 20 March 2008.

There are three different references. The inventory allows to know the memory of the connections, but does not confirm current conditions or propose crossings.

In May 1758, the vicar of Vila Nune registered 55 neighbors and 239 people. He numbered fourteen places, some with only one resident, and marked uninhabited houses in the place of Serra.

These numbers describe different categories of the document. They should not be added or confused with a current census. The small scale of the places helps imagine a scattered settlement, observed from the parish.

The enumeration allows to approach the look: Silva assigns eight neighbors; to Vale and Rossada, five to each. Fojães and Ribeira da Covilhã appear with one resident. The church was in Granja, near the Valley. The religious center was not confused, therefore, with the place called Vila Nune.

The vicar Domingos Leite de Andrade adds that there were unmarried women in poverty between neighbors and people from other parishes. It is the social description of an author and of a time, without allowing the life of each person to be reconstructed. By preserving the terms and date, the document allows different domestic conditions to be observed within the small places.