After two years of restrictions due to the Covid pandemic, Portugal is now resuming one of its main traditions: the parties of Santos Populares, celebrations that honor Santo Antônio, São João and São Pedro and which are at the origin of Brazilian June festivals.
In the territory where the European country is located, long before the Christian tradition, the Celts already celebrated the harvest on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The Catholic festivals then began to incorporate and give new interpretations to the parties. In Portugal, street celebrations –with arraiás and flags, as in Brazil– take place throughout the month, but each region of the country has a more celebrated saint.
In Lisbon, for example, the main festival is Santo Antônio, whose day, June 13, is a municipal holiday.
Although he became known as Saint Anthony of Padua, the Italian city in which he died, the religious with a reputation as a matchmaker was born in the Portuguese capital. It is not by chance that one of the Lisbon traditions to honor him is precisely the weddings. Every year, the City Council —equivalent to the city hall— sponsors a large collective liaison, the so-called Santo Antônio Weddings.
The ceremony, held on June 12 at the Sé de Lisboa, is broadcast live on TV, and the wedding party –called a glass of water in Portugal– is also up to the municipality and sponsors.
In Porto, Braga and much of the North of the country, São João dominates the festivities. As the 24th of June is a holiday in several Portuguese cities, the entertainment starts the day before and invades the dawn.
One of the main traditions of the celebrations was the habit of using a kind of leek to hit, usually with delicacy, the heads of friends and family in the midst of the hustle. Today, the gesture is being carried out with the São João hammers, plastic toys that make noise when used.
Very traditional in Brazil, bonfires are also part of the Portuguese June rites. The ritualistic use of fire again comes from pagan ceremonies, in which the burning of herbs was a way of honoring the deities. In Portugal, flames are also present in the São Pedro festivities, which have the practice of jumping bonfires as one of their main attractions. Although it is more celebrated in the south of the country, São Pedro’s day, on June 29, is also a holiday in Évora, Sintra, Seixal and several other municipalities.
If Portugal was inspired by the Celts to give rise to the festivities of the Popular Saints, when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil they came across an indigenous tradition of celebrating the harvest, which takes place in June. “So, what they did was to give, let’s say, a more Christian characteristic to the celebrations that already existed”, says historian Eliane Morelli, a researcher at Unicamp.
There, as here, food is one of the highlights of the festivities, “because it symbolizes abundance, it is a very strong component of sociability among peoples”. “In Brazil, the June festival menu comes largely from indigenous traditions. We have corn, manioc, peanuts, which are very present”, says Morelli. “But we incorporated sugar and cinnamon, brought by the Portuguese. This is the case with hominy and sweet rice.”
In Portugal, the greatest symbol of Santos Populares is the grilled sardines. The reason is simple: this is the period when fishing is most plentiful. Thus, it is possible to taste them all over the country. Another party star is the so-called bifana, a sandwich with thin grilled pork steaks.
The Portuguese tradition also includes the habit of giving gifts, especially to amorous targets, with a basil vase containing a paper carnation and a little flag with a poetic quatrain. The plant is a relative of the well-known basil and, similarly, is very aromatic, but has slightly smaller leaves.
The soundtrack has changed. Although it is still dominant, pimba —full of puns and sexualized jokes—has begun to compete with other genres, including Brazilian funk and sertanejo.
Even though most Covid-related restrictions have already ended in the country, health experts are apprehensive about the impact of the holidays at a time of rising new infections.
