Chamusca

On the plain between the Tagus and the wooded charneca, Chamusca is a small town of the old Ribatejo where two landscapes meet: the flooded fields and rice country of the Lezíria below, and the great montados of holm oak and cork oak above. Bulls and cork are the town’s marks, and its streets keep the unhurried air of a river county seat.

A town of the queen’s foral

The town received its charter in 1561 from the queen regent D. Catarina, and the church of São Brás stands as the mother church from those years. The bullring is listed among the town’s monuments, and Chamusca keeps two groups of forcados — the amateur bull-men of the Ribatejo tradition — as well as the spring fair and the candlelit procession that mark its calendar. The riverside kept boatmen who ferried cork, firewood and passengers across the Tagus, a trade remembered in the town’s river past.

Between charneca and Lezíria

The municipality is one of the emptiest in Portugal, and much of it is woodland: the montado country yields cork and acorns, shelters deer and birds, and gives way southwards to the wet fields of the Tagus plain. Driving routes cross from the cork woods to the riverside villages, and the county capitals of the old Ribatejo — Santarém upstream and Benavente across the plain — frame the municipality on either side.

What to see

• The old centre and the church of São Brás
• The bullring and the forcados tradition
• The cork oak montado of the charneca
• The rice fields and riverside of the Lezíria
• The viewpoints over the Tagus plain

Practical information

Chamusca lies in the Santarém district, on the right bank of the Tagus, on the roads between Santarém and the Alentejo plain. Summer heat is strong on the plain: carry water, plan walks for morning, and check the official websites before setting out.

Image credit: Chamusca by GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.