The Daily Dave

You Can Go Home Again. Just Wait About 425 Years First.

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Here’s how I’d like to think it went down:

Portuguese inquisitor: Are you Tobia and Vaz da Silva from Trás-os-Montes?

Tobia and Vaz: Yes.

PI: We’re expelling the Jews. You have to leave.

T&V: We want to speak to your manager.

PI: We’re expelling the Karens, too.

T&V: When can we come back?

PI: Never.

T&V: What about our children?

PI: Nope.

T&V: Our grandchildren?

PI: Also nope.

T&V: Our grandchildren’s children? 

PI: Listen, I don’t have time to discuss this. I have a long list of Jews and Karens to expel today, and I’m way behind. If I say ten generations, will you leave me alone so I can get back to work?

T&V: Deal! We’ll be back.

Tobia and Vaz sail for Amsterdam. Approximately four and a quarter centuries later, their 10th-great-grandson arrives in Trás-os-Montes in a rented Dacia Sandero.

Me, the 10th-great-grandson: We’re back!

There’s No Place Like Homeland

It’s unlikely that’s what really happened. In fact, historians would vehemently disagree with much of my imagined scenario; to wit, they already have incontrovertible, fully documented proof that I was driving a Toyota Corolla.

But it’s true that one long branch of my family tree reaches back more than 500 years to Trás-os-Montes. It’s also true that my 10th-great-grandparents moved from Portugal to the Netherlands sometime around 1600.

“Hold up—why the hell did you drive four hours and 200 miles1 to visit a place you’re only tenuously connected to?” I hear you ask. “You’re not a geologist!”

It’s a fair question, even though I’m judging you for saying geologist when you mean genealogist. Also, it was five hours and 300 miles,2 thankyouverymuch.

The short answer: Why not?

The long answer, in bullet points:

  • I was in Portugal.
  • I had the time.
  • I’ve made so many references about England and Spain being my ancestral homelands that I figured it was about time to visit an actual ancestral homeland.
  • The second-longest branch on my family tree leads back to Ukraine. The Complimentary Spouse and I planned to visit in 2020, but then Covid happened. We made plans again for 2022 but, well, you know.

The Land Behind the Mountains

Trás-os-Montes is a region, not a town or city, and it’s about the size of Puerto Rico.3 The name means “Behind the Mountains,” which is appropriate because it’s located behind the mountains.

The region is beautiful in a rugged, rural way. Picture small towns and farms dotting the hills, with clear blue skies overhead and a flat line of mountains in the background. If you want to paint it, stock up on greens and browns.

This is a picture of Trás-os-Montes as seen from the castle in Bragança.
The view from Bragança Castle.

Since I don’t know exactly where the da Silvas lived, I decided to focus on just one city: Bragança, home to the Sephardic Interpretive Center.4

The short stretch between the motorway and the center of Bragança was the least scenic part of Trás-os-Montes.5 I passed my ancestral Hyundai dealership and several ancestral Burger Kings before finding a parking spot in the ancestral garage underneath my ancestral mall. Welcome to the food court of my ancestors!

Heritage. Museum.

This is a photo of Dave in front of text that reads: "This is to disclose and preserve the identity and memory of the Sephardic Jews of Northeastern Trás-os-Montes, as if it were a journey in time and to the depths of social consciousness, so that men may remember. The injustice and humiliation, as well as the courage of resistance, will not be forgotten."
Click to embiggen the text.

The Sephardic Interpretive Center is small and easy to miss. The narrow three-story space appears to be slivered off the neighboring museum, the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais.6

Through the door, I found a long, well-lit hallway with artwork on the right and profiles of a few historians on the left. The woman at the reception desk at the end of the hall rose to greet me, delighted but a little surprised that a lone American would take the time to drive up from Lisbon to visit. I suspect most of their guests are part of organized Jewish heritage tours.

Behind her desk, a skylit staircase led to a small history exhibit on the first floor and something I’d consider more of a conceptual space on the second one.

The place looked new at first glance, and neglected on subsequent ones. The virtual exhibits, of which there weren’t many, didn’t work.

The exhibits were labeled in Portuguese and English. Some of the translations were a bit, well, odd. Let’s chalk the following example up to Google Translate having an off day, not lingering antisemitism:7

The Sephardic Jews are one of the most notorious identities within Judaism, and they have been part of the Iberian population for over 2,000 years. 

No-no-notorious. Notorious. If that’s the first thing that popped into your head when you read that word, you and I can be friends:

Simon Le Bon. Swoon.

I don’t want to sound too negative about the center. I’d rather have Trás-os-Montes’ Jewish history recounted with some flaws than not recounted at all. In addition, it’s hard to understand the historical impact of the Jewish expulsion from Iberia if you only focus on powerful people making major decisions in Lisbon, Madrid, and Toledo. You need to also know what was happening to the ordinary folks living behind the mountains.

Two Cats, a Castle, and Some Birds

On my way out, I asked the employee where most Jews in Bragança used to live, and she directed me to Rua Dos Gatos. It’s a narrow, cobblestoned street—not wide enough to swing one cat, let alone two—that’s a bit too dilapidated to be called charming, yet a bit too charming to be called dilapidated.

A photo of Rua Dos Gatos, a narrow street lined with older buildings.
This Rua Dos Gatos. Bragança Castle is in the background.

At street level, it looks like Rua Dos Gatos is uninhabited. The walls and doors have seen better days. But, look up, and you’ll see signs of renovation, like repainted walls and replacement windows.

I didn’t see any cats. Perhaps they scampered away because they were worried I’d swing them around to prove how narrow the road was.

Once I reached the end of Rua Dos Gatos, I wasn’t far from the castle. Well, it doesn’t look far on the map, but it turned out to be an uphill schlep.8

A photo of Dave with the town of Bragança in the background.
From the top of the hill outside the castle, you can see Bragança. You’ll notice I’ve taken off my jacket, even though it’s cold, because walking uphill is hard work! This was a good place to catch my breath before entering the castle.
This is a photo of the entrance gate to Bragança Castle.
Bragança Castle was built around 1400, so the da Silvas would be familiar with it. It was originally an inflatable bouncy castle, which, while fun, was hard to defend. It was soon replaced with a stone castle, which is much less fun but is harder to pierce with arrows.
A view of Bragança as seen from the castle's wall-walk. There is some green space in the foreground and the city sits on hills in the background.
A view of the town from the castle wall-walk. Sadly, it’s hard to know exactly how much the view has changed since the 17th century. For some reason, I can’t find any photos or videos from that time. Weird.9
This is a view from the castle's wall-walk. There are dark green hills and a blue sky.
A little farther away on the wall-walk, you can see the Trás-os-Montes countryside. I believe that’s an olive tree grove on the left, but I know nothing about plants so I’m probably wrong.
This is a photo of Dave posing on the wall-walk. He's leaning against the wall, crossing his arms, and looking at something in the distance.
This photo is in no way posed.
This flock of birds circled over the castle the entire time I was there. Fortunately, this didn’t turn into a Tippi Hedren situation. I’d look bad as a blonde, I don’t own a dress, and I don’t think I’d be able to run in heels.
This is a view of the castle gate, seen from inside the castle. You can see a path leading to the city.
Enough castle-ing for one day. Let’s go back to town.

Leaving Trás-os-Montes: I Have Some Thoughts

I went downhill and explored Bragança some more. I appreciated the fact that I didn’t hear anyone else speak English or see any souvenir shops. It’s good to know that I wasn’t seeing a part of Portugal that hadn’t been edited for tourists. However, this meant I could not buy Britt a T-shirt saying, “My husband went to his ancestral homeland and all I got is this T-shirt.”

A view of narrow street in Bragança with the town in the distance.
I’m returning to the town center from the castle. It’s a downhill walk. Hooray!
A photo of an old white Citroën on a cobblestone street in Bragança.
According to Google’s Image Search, this is a Citroën GS from the 1970s. Sadly, this wasn’t an option at Avis, which is why I ended up with boring ol’ Toyota Corolla.

I left Bragança around 5 p.m. I had a two-hour drive to Porto ahead of me, and I felt I had accomplished my objective—to look at where part of my family came from centuries ago.

Should I have spent more time in Trás-os-Montes? I don’t know. I saw part of the region, learned more about the history of Sephardic Jews, and got some photos. But did I have an epiphany about my heritage or forge a spiritual connection with the place? No, but I hadn’t expected those things to happen. And they wouldn’t have happened if I had stayed a few more hours, or even days.

Would I go back? Maybe. Do I regret going? Not one whit. Here’s why:

Ancestry and history are, to a certain degree, concepts and not tangibles. The further back you go, the more abstract they become.

Approaching ancestry and history as a list of dates and events doesn’t help us learn who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. But approaching these things with curiosity can broaden our worldviews and make abstractions slightly less abstract.

Sometimes opportunities to do that are elusive. But they’re always worth pursuing. Even when they’re five hours and 300 miles away.

Footnotes

  1. Or, for those of you who aren’t living with ridiculously antiquated measurement systems, 320 kilometers. ↩︎
  2. That’s 480 kilometers. ↩︎
  3. Trás-os-Montes is slightly smaller: 3,154 mi2, compared to Puerto Rico’s 3,515 mi2. If. you’re using kilometers, that’s 8,168 km2 and 9,100 km2, respectively. ↩︎
  4. It would be unfair to call Trás-os-Montes the West Virginia of Portugal. But the analogy is not entirely wrong. Trás-os-Montes lags behind the rest of the country in population and prosperity. It’s one of the least industrialized parts of Portugal, and relies on legacy industries like forestry and agriculture. The population is aging and shrinking as young people move away in search of better job opportunities. (How do I know all this? I searched the internet, and nothing you see on the internet is wrong.) ↩︎
  5. Some pronunciation guidance: Trás-os-Montes is trash-oosh-MON-shush. Bragança is bruh-GAN-zha. ↩︎
  6. It’s such a small museum that it doesn’t have a gift shop. Or bathrooms—you have to use the ones in the museum next door. ↩︎
  7. Here’s another awkward passage that comes across as a mixture of facts, stereotypes, and translation errors: “The banishment of the Sephardic elites had dramatic consequences. Compelled to leave the Kingdom, they took with them large fortunes, as well as the know-how and the capacity for innovation, which hopelessly weakened the development of Portugal.” ↩︎
  8. Portugal is quite hilly. Every time I turned a corner to find a steep incline or flight of stairs, I heard Indiana Jones’ voice in my head: “Hills. Why’d it have to be hills?” ↩︎
  9. I’ve been thinking about how much the world has changed since Tobia and Vas were kicked out of Portugal. Their descendants experienced the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, electrification, trains and planes, telecommunication, computing, and the invention of the Pizza Bagel. ↩︎