“The village suddenly appears whole, thrown up the slope as if it had had great plans for ascent and lacked the strength at the first impulse”: this is how José Saramago described, in his “Viagem a Portugal”, the visual impact of arriving in São Jorge da Beira (coming from Panasqueira). However, in reality, the people of São Jorge da Beira never lacked strength.
Yes, it took strength – and ambition – to change, again and again, the fate of the place once known as Cebola (because it is very close to Pico da Cebola, the highest point of Serra do Açor). At the end of the 19th century, the inhabitants of this ancient village of shepherds, coalsmiths and blacksmiths (which is believed to have existed since the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula) dared to ask the municipality of Covilhã to become an independent parish, leaving that of Casegas – and saw the wish fulfilled. Decades later (in 1960), they changed the name to the beautiful land of mines (tungsten, tin, quartz and apatite) and chestnut trees, a natural habitat of miners and wolves: Cebola was renamed São Jorge da Beira, in honor of the patron saint of the place.
The capacity for reinvention remains, even today, in the face of the decline of the mining sector and the aging of the population. The village in the southwest of the municipality of Covilhã retains dynamic cultural associations, without forgetting the past: one of the places to visit is the Museum House, which, inside its shale walls, displays old clothes, furniture and utensils, including musical instruments, agricultural implements and a vast collection linked to the history of the region’s mines.
Mountain Villages