It is a cool spring afternoon and Fernando PB arrives at Café Central carrying a loaf of chorizo bread the size of a fox under his arm. He sees the three strangers sitting at a table on the terrace and asks if they would like a slice of bread. Leaning over a plate of snails, the strangers delight in the sauce made with oregano and garlic, plus some secret ingredient that they will never discover. The arbutus fruit spirit (medronho) hasn’t yet arrived at the table, but after months of lockdown, any beer is enough to liven up the conversation. Meanwhile, Le- onel “Rouba-a-Rir”, owner of the café located in Odemira’s main square, in the Portuguese region of Alentejo, arrives with another round. It doesn’t take long for the medronho, Alentejo’s famous medronho, to enter the scene: a type of homemade brandy, probably capable of killing any virus that even dreams of approach- ing. Everyone gets up and they almost hug each other, but this isn’t the time. Each at their table and with the proper social distance, they raise their arms for a toast from afar, among strangers who just became friends and who will never see each other again. The snails were the pretext, but someone would later say: “We started off with lupines and fin- ished with medronho.” There are certain things that can only be ex- perienced firsthand – the Alentejo conviviality is one of them.
Text: Cristiana Pereira
Photo: Vasco Célio
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