Benagil 1940

Author: Alfredo Santos
Category: Fiction

Presented as a novel, this is, in fact, an autobiography of its author, which, in a painful but uncomplex way, tells us the story of a traditional Algarve family between the 1940s and 1960s. Like most households in the area from Lagoa, Carvoeiro and Benagil, his family also lived from working in the fields, in exchange for a meager salary for his daily work, living more on other people's charity than on a salary, living in unhealthy housing, with gigantic offspring.

He tells us about wealthy owners and their relationship with servants; sponsorship by the poor as a form of protection and by the rich as an act of Christian charity; illiteracy and the difficulties faced by those who wanted to study; the awakening of sexuality and the discovery of fishing and tourism, which would profoundly mark the change in mentalities. Contract work to be sold to tourists, figs picked from the ground and dried naturally, presented as a regional delicacy.

All of this is remembered and told in the first person, disguised as romance, so as not to hurt the most sensitive spirits.

An indispensable work to discover the naked truth of a social reality that many want to forget.