Voyages inside Portugal

Aveiro: the troubled love story of a river and a lagoon

Posted on by Jules & Verne
Reading time 5 minutes

In Portuguese, much like in Old English, objects have gender. A road, petite and curvaceous, is a “she”. A tree trunk, burly and straight, is a “he”. Here and there, from a kid’s homework to a piece of literature, the lack of a gender-neutral “it” infuses things with the hint of a character. Perhaps nowhere else are these personifications more seductive than at Aveiro. A resolute but imperceptive ‘Rio Vouga’ outflows in the ‘Ria de Aveiro’, a voluptuous yet serpentine lagoon.  For centuries, this fatherly river and this motherly lagoon have shared a name (‘Ria’ is the female of ‘Rio’) and the duty of providing for an entire city.

Aveiro canals, Portugal (35mm, 1/420s, f7.1, ISO 200)
Aveiro canals, Portugal (35mm, 1/60s, f2, ISO 4000)

We brushed on Aveiro before, on a rather early start to one of our wintertime Portuguese travels:

Saturday morning, 7:05. The alarm had gone off five minutes earlier, but I was still drafting all my resolution in order to get out of bed and go for a run. The sky was clear blue, but the condensation that covered the window hinted that the t-shirt and shorts I had managed to cram onto my suitcase were not the proper attire. One step out of the hotel confirmed that. Too late to back out now, as I would lose face with the sleepy but mocking receptionist. A brisk pace would have to make up for the missing jacket. Bad planning aside, I love exploring a new city in the early hours of a sleepy weekend morning. I ran along the deserted river bank, passing the many colourful moored ‘moliceiros’ (boats traditionally used in the Aveiro lagoon to collect ‘moliço’, or seagrass) and slowly drifting outside of town. Salt warehouses, piles of fishnets and small boat docks replaced the city centre’s tidy three-story buildings. I stopped and looked around. The still waters and the silence of those early hours created a beautifully serene scenery.

Aveiro canals, Portugal (47mm, 1/400s, f7.1, ISO 200)
Decorative sardines hanging on a wall, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/70s, f2, ISO 200)

The life of Aveiro has indeed always revolved around water. But, perhaps like any old marriage, the bond between the river and the lagoon has known troubled times.

The cast of our love story (35mm, 1/60s, f2.8, ISO 640)

Thousands of years ago, the region around Aveiro was a great plain. When the oceans rose, the plain become a navigable vastness of water that brought prosperity to the region. Charmed by the maritime trade and the booming salt industry, the inhabitants of Aveiro payed no heed to the dangers lurking beneath the waters.

Painted tiles, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/55s, f9, ISO 200)
Painted tiles, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/900s, f2, ISO 200)

Year after year, the river’s rapidly flowing stream sent vast amounts of sediment racing through the lagoon, but the ocean’s strong currents prevented it from getting out, creating a growing sandbank between the lagoon and the ocean.

Aveiro canals, Portugal (35mm, 1/45s, f2, ISO 3200)
Aveiro canals, Portugal (35mm, 1/40s, f2, ISO 6400)

By the 10th century, parts of that sandbank were already visible above the waters. But still Aveiro’s inhabitants were happy, as the sandbank sheltered ships from the rigours of the Atlantic Ocean and increased the production of salt. Slowly and steadily, the sandbank continued to creep up.

Painted tiles, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/320s, f5.6, ISO 200)
Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/4700s, f2, ISO 200)

By the 15th century the sandbank had grown so prominent that larger ships could no longer pass. The stagnating lagoon waters, no longer freely flowing into the ocean, also brought disease and floods. Aveiro spiralled into a recession, driving many of its inhabitants to seek fortune elsewhere.

A crumbling house at Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/400s, f11, ISO 200)
A crumbling house at Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/450s, f9, ISO 200)

A courageous few remained but, in a sombre day in 1757, the lagoon became fully landlocked. Those courageous few, already incapable of making a living from the sea, now faced drowning under the incessant flow of water that kept gushing out of the river.

The caravel pilot João Afonso de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/30s, f2, ISO 6400)
Jules takes a picture of the João Afonso de Aveiro statue , Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/40s, f2, ISO 6400)

Europe’s best engineers were brought in to solve the issue, but man-made efforts paled in comparison with the might of the imperceptive river, the serpentine lagoon and the unforgiving ocean. Only in 1808, after many attempts, was it possible to build a long-lasting strait between the lagoon and the ocean.

Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/7000s, f2, ISO 200)
Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/420s, f8, ISO 200)
Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/400s, f13, ISO 200)

Slowly and hesitantly, prosperity came back to Aveiro. The once nefarious sandbank became a long stretch of beach, to be enjoyed by fishermen and holidaymakers alike.

Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/350s, f13, ISO 200)
Costa Nova beach, Aveiro, Portugal (35mm, 1/400s, f13, ISO 200)

Yet, beneath those seemingly calm lagoon waters, the same ancient forces continue to clash. For how long will Aveiro be able to placate them?

Verne*

49 thoughts on “Aveiro: the troubled love story of a river and a lagoon”

  3. I really like your maps on your notepad! I’ve been fascinated (and tried to imitate) the hand-drawn maps I’d seen on an old edition of “The Hobbit” since I was 1 metre and a tomato tall, and always failed. Great to see that someone instead has the skill to do them nicely!

    Thanks for yet another beautiful Portuguese story, obrigado!

    Fabrizio

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    1. Hi Fabrizio, funny that you mention that, as I got the inspiration for these maps from “The Lord of the Rings”! I was perhaps 12 (so probably one meter and two tomatos tall) when I read the trilogy for the first time, and I remember going back to those maps printed on the first pages frequently, as they made the story come alive 🙂 – Verne

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      1. Ah, the LoTR map! I remember being incredibly pissed off because some of the details weren’t exactly as the ones of the Hobbit! Tolkien really shaped many of us didn’t he?

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  4. Amazing photos!:) I went to Aveiro two weeks ago, it was as a part of our little road trip… It’s such a beautiful city!:) We were lucky as the weather was really good and sun was shining!:) Your photos are taking me back to this day!:) thanks ! 😀
    I am a big fan of Portugal and a big fan of your photos of Portugal 😀

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    1. Dziękuję Ci bardzo! 🙂 But I’m afraid you’re giving me too much credit: the weather is usually gorgeous in Portugal, that makes photography much easier 🙂 Will you write about your Aveiro trip? – Verne

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      1. 🙂 that’s true, most of the time the weather is great here (I love it!:) my friend who was on the road trip with me had visited Aveiro earlier and didn’t have much luck with the weather, all she saw was heavy rain hehe so we were lucky seeing it in the sun!:)
        Yes, I will be soon uploading photos of Lisbon and other places I have visited around Portugal 🙂

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  5. Guys, I’m trying to find you Blog about Lisbon as friends of mine are coming over in September. I can’t seem to find it anymore. Any chance you could email me the link again? Or tell me what category it was under?
    Cheers
    Ursula, Cairns

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    1. Thank you Jo, both for the compliment and for making me fetch the dictionary 🙂 It’s also rather fitting that ‘beguiling’ is not easily translated to Portuguese, much like ‘saudade’ and ‘desenrascanço’ are cumbersome to translate to English – Verne

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  11. Wonderful and thought provoking. So many peninsulas and islands are experiencing this sort of thing nowadays…how long until it becomes another crisis? Aveiro’s story and your photos remind me of my travels to Torcello, an island off of Venice, Italy which suffered a similar fate, one from which it never recovered. Today 10 people live permanently on the isle.

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    1. Thank you! I hope you have a chance to indulge your emotional and romantic sides and visit Aveiro (and other bits of Portugal). Bring a hungry side as well, the food is great too 🙂 – Verne

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    1. Thank you Karmen! I wasn’t thinking of including a map on my next post (it’s about something that is not very “mappable”), but your feedback made me change my mind. I’ll figure out a way to include a drawing 🙂 – Verne

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  20. Ah, if only those noun genders always made so much sense! It’s easier in Old English, simply ACCEPTING that male-seeming things might have “feminine” gender, because one never has to CONVERSE with native speakers (except in those long-ago graduate seminars). Much more difficult for native English speakers not to sound foolish in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, etc. etc.

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    1. Good point! But, at least in Portuguese, any non-native speaker that attempts to speak this rather convoluted language gets enough brownie points to compensate for any gender blunder. I, on the other hand, get a ton of flack everytime I get it wrong (I keep calling a propeller “she”, when it’s a “he”) -Verne

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  21. Pingback: Aveiro: the troubled love story of a river and a lagoon — Jules Verne Times Two — С любовью к людям!

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