António José Marques da Silva

Post-doctoral fellowship of FCT

[CEAACP- Cultural Heritage Sciences]

amsarqueologia@sapo.pt

The fable of the cod and the promised sea

About Portuguese traditions of bacalhau

Bacalhau tradition is actually one of the most iconic elements of Portuguese identity.

Bacalhau tradition is presented inside and outside the country, as a common heritage shared by all Portuguese, which distinguish their own national character from other European people.

As a national heritage, cod tradition is today usually intended as a simple continuity, in this case of an unchanged element of a same food way shared by all Portuguese, supported by a same fishing and curing techniques through time.

A social force more active than never...

The collective memory built around the bacalhau is a social force, more active than ever.The bacalhau tradition contributes as cultural heritage at the same time to the construction of national identity, local identity and of the identity of communities of Portuguese diaspora scattered around the world.This cross fire of social and political uses usually contributes to reinforce the assumption, already old but still quite consensual, of the existence of a national tradition that includes both fishing, drying and consumption of cod, emphasizing antiquity, authenticity, typicality and uniqueness of different material and immaterial realities associated with it.

... based on a “die hard cliché”

The image of the national cod fisheries as a resurgence of the glorious past of the Portuguese Nation faithful to its maritime vocation, had been promoted during all along the dictatorial regime.Today, forty years after the fall of the dictatorial regime, it is still common to conceive the bacalhau tradition as an expression of the Portuguese maritime vocation.

“Soon again, husbands and wives must part to await the end of the long summer alone. To them, it is accepted as a way of life; for

life is synonymous with the sea. It is their home, their heritage. A host, that have sustained them as long they had

habited their shores. It is the very breath of Portugal and their indomitable men of the sea”.

“The lonely dorymen - Portugal’s men of the sea” National Geographic 1967.

The national(?) fishing tradition(s)

XVIth centuryShore waters fisheries

in Terra Nova

Portuguese joined Basque, French, Irish and English fishermen in the Newfoundland banks around 1500 but Portuguese had never been a major player at this stage.

European fishermen came back every year to fish cod in shore waters.

They shored every day to the fishing rooms used at the same time as night camp and as curing station.

After 1580, Portuguese interrupted during several centuries their fisheries in the Northwestern Atlantic.

Cod fisheries in the XVIth century.

Companhia de Pescarias Lisbonense 1835-1857 obliged to recruit experts in England to give formation to their own crews.

Bensaúde & C. after 1872 (Creoula and Gazela from Faial Island).

This company shared with Mariano & Irmão C., founded in 1884, the monopoly of this activity during the rest of the century. This company recruited Azorean fishermen, previously trained in the United States of America.(Júlia 1: captain José da Cunha Ferreira from S. Jorge island)

XIXth centuryThe edge of offshore fisheries

on the Grand Banks

The one-man dory boat inspired on the warys, a kind of fishing boat developed by American fishermen around the middle of the XVIIIth century.

New narrative of the bacalhau tradition, refocused in the line-fishery activity and the anachronous sailboats of the White Fleet.

The return to the Great Bank was now intended as a resurgence of the glorious maritime past of the Portuguese Nation.

The White Fleet expanded during this period, but the imports from northern countries continued to supply an important part of national needs.

1930-1967The cod campaign of the dictatorial regime

Dories coming back to the “Novos Mares” ship c. 1940

The ceremony of the departure of the white fleet in Belem, 1938.

After 1967The end of the Portuguese fisheries tradition

N/M Pascoal Atlântico

Decline of the cod populations in NW Atlantic.

Modernisation of the fleet in a context of very strong and competitive Northern European offer.

Portuguese producers fish now a very few part of the cod they sell in national market. It is now mostly a curing industry concentrated in Gafanha da Nazaré, next to Aveiro.

Cais dos Bacalhoeiros –

Gafanha da Nazaré

A national(?) consuming tradition(s)

Some monasteries used cod to feed their employees since the XVIth century.

Since then, British merchants supplied Portuguese ports, turning gradually the country on one of the world largest importer.

Salt cod was already a staple food of the ordinary people, at least in the middle of the XVIIIth century in Portugal.

Part of the daily diet of religious communities and substituted meat even on the plate of the most fortunate, during the many days of fast imposed by the Church.

The local offer of fish couldn’t cover the demand. The supply of cod turned gradually on an important factor of Portugal excessive unbalanced trade with UK well related by contemporaneous writers.

End of the XVIth to XIXth centuryConsolidation of the consumption

habits

Social and geographical assymetries of cod

consumptionduring the dictatorial

regimeAt this stage, bacalhau still was a common meal for low strata urban consumers in northern and southern litoral cities.

The cod they could afford was generally of national provenience, smaller and inferior in quality than imported cods (asa branca), only affordable to the richest.

Northern elites prefer Newfoundlandlight salted cod (Christmas meal): bacalhau inglês / de cura amarela.

Southern elites prefer high salted and whiter cod from the Northern Europe: cura sueca /cura islandesa.

Salt cod consumption pattern today

Bacalhau consumption patterns changed. Portuguese, however, continues to be the largest world’s consumers of salted cod with an estimated consumption of 30 kg/year per capita.

Favorite food of the Christmas night now in ALL the country. 1/3 of total average spending of Portuguese consumers during the Nativity period.

Evolution of the market of sub-products (frayed codfish and ultra-frozen soaked cod, etc).

A national(?) curing tradition(s?)

The born of the curing traditionIn the early stage, only the fish caught at the end of the fishing season was heavily salted to preserve it during the journey of return. Cod was, in this case, only dried later when fishermen came back to their homeport. This process is documented in Portugal for the time in 1572 at the Northern port of Aveiro.

After the renewal of the fisheries, Portuguese companies had a limited access to Newfoundland ports and joined their predecessors in the offshore banks, preparing and salting cod on board and air-drying all the catch only when they came back to the homeland.

With the renew of the Portuguese fisheries, green cod (wet salted cod) came again to the fishing harbors of Portugal, to be dried in processing units located close to the homeports of cod’s fishermen, until 1903, mostly Lisbon and Figueira da Foz.

At Aveiro, cod drying activity only restarted, after a pause of three centuries, a few years later. In the next decades, this port will become the principal center of the Portuguese cod industry.

Geography of the curing industry during the cod campaign

The most common cure was Nacional (or Canadiana). Rudimentary and low cost affordable for the poorest consumers: simply dry green cod without soaking or salting it again. Durability of six months. Recognizable by its characteristic pale yellow color.

A few national producers also imitated sometimes both yellow and white cure of “asa branca”, adapting Norwegians and Newfoundlanders curing methods to threat the green cod.

The whiter color characteristic of the cura branca was obtained salting green cod twice after washing it instead of drying it directly.

In the case of cura amarela, even if the final product had some similarities, the curing process was very different. The heavy salted green cod had to be soaked (+ a solution of metabisulfite) before being dried with a lesser content of salt and a yellower color.

Different curing technique used during the cod campaign

Portuguese curing tradition, today.Curing is now an industrial process often involving previously frozen cod.

Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) of the salted cod label “Produced following the Portuguese tradition” with no chemical addition.-> polyphosphate crisis.

This TSG perpetuate the pale yellow color characteristic of the cura nacional that was the staple food in popular milieu during the dictatorial regime and at the same time the yellowish cura amarela cod, preferred by the Northern elites in the past, but with low demand today on the Portuguese market, is now promoted as gourmet product.

“asa branca” means today high quality product.

ConclusionBacalhau tradition continues to be very active in the social arena, in the post-national world we live today, surprisingly in the same way this notion was mobilized in the past by intellectuals elites to cultivate the patriotic attachment to the Nation. In such essentialist outlook, each national culture was understood as an island, being strongly related to national territory, inside which each culture remains unchanged, but still under threat of erosion by excessive permeability to external influences. Such idea of culture is incompatible with the actual conception of intangible heritage.Netherless, such nationalist outlook continues to orient institutional agents that use tangible and intangible heritage as instrument of governmentality even in a context of banal cosmopolitanism. In the Portuguese case, the believe in a maritime vocation intended as mark of the national character complement the symbolic capital of the bacalhau tradition, acting retroactively as substantiation and expression of such vocation.

The fable of the cod and the promised seaAbout Portuguese traditions of bacalhau

António José Marques da Silva

Post-doctoral fellowship of FCT

[CEAACP- Cultural Heritage Sciences]

amsarqueologia@sapo.pt