When in Portugal we were to attend the international show of Lusitano horses. These are the Portuguese branch of the Andalusian (or Iberian) breed. How is it that a boy from Texas needs to do this? Well, it’s a long story. The roots of the tale are in a school paper I had to write on the Spanish painter Velazquez. In researching his work I noticed that the horses he depicted were very distinct from the quarter horses with which I was familiar. Decades later while helping my family with horse shows, in which we were riding Peruvian horses, I was asked to be the announcer, mainly because I could pronounce Spanish words. In the process I rediscovered the Spanish horse, and I found that they actually did, indeed, look like Velazquez painted them. Eventually I was asked to ride and train some of these wondrous unicorn-like steeds, and as luck would have it we are now breeding both Spanish and Portuguese horses. So there you have it, we were on a fact-finding Tour, with friends, learning more about the famous bullfighting, dancing, stallions, the foundation breed for the Spanish riding school in Vienna, and one of the best things besides Bach and Vivaldi’s music to come down to us from the Baroque period.
Arriving at the showgrounds at Quinta da Marinha (keenta de mariña) we stared open mouthed at a grassy field, bracketed with coliseum like stands, where two dressage rings were occupied by magnificent stallions performing graceful dressage movements, like on slow motion film. Before our eyes were collected canters, piaffe and passage, pirouettes, flying changes, and one-tempis. All of this with no apparent effort, either by the rider or by the horse. They appeared to float, only touching the ground occasionally to assure that it was still there. We were enthralled! Here we were in a foreign land seeing horses do things I’d only seen in movies. I thought it couldn’t possibly get better than this, but it did! Tune in again tomorrow for another episode of a Texan in Portugal!
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Toward Portugal
We just got back from Portugal! No, that’s not the name of a town in Texas, it’s a country in Western Europe, right next to Spain, a part of the Iberian Peninsula. We went to see the horses of course! We’d been invited by our friends, who were in turn invited by one of the most prestigious judges of Lusitano horses in Portugal, Bento Castelhano. Bento, by the way is one sure enough nice guy! We were there to see the National Lusitano Horse show.
What was it like for a Texan to be in Portugal? In a word – magnificent! The horses, the people, the weather, the food, the cute white buildings with red tile roofs (some really ancient ones) were all a feast of the senses. It was like being in a dream, or a movie. Expecting the language to be remotely like our Mexican Spanish, however, was absolutely not true! But the majority of people in Portugal speak very good English.If being there was a dream, getting there was a nightmare! We found ourselves bogged down with scheduling problems. We started out one morning thinking to fly to DFW then Philadelphia, where we’d meet with our friends, then on to Lisbon! But it didn’t work out that way. Thanks to the feverish work of the truly unselfish and helpful folks at Easterwood airport in College Station, we were rescheduled, and instead of missing the trip altogether, we were re-routed! Three cheers for the Home Team! We spent one day getting to DFW, then on to Heathrow through the night, and then to Lisbon late the next day. A long taxi ride from the Lisbon airport to Cascais, the Riviera of Portugal, was made entertaining by Joao (of course) our driver, who told stories, explained history and sang songs! He even treated us to a drive along the Atlantic shore, which he stated was the westernmost tip of Europe. Finally we were united with our friends at Vila Bicuda, and immediately whisked off in yet another pair of taxis to the ancient, narrow, winding streets of downtown Cascais, to a seaside restaurant called Ratatouille! In places you could actually touch the walls of the buildings on both sides of the cab. We were definitely not in Texas, Toto!