Portugal as a whole is less wealthy than most of Europe: its income per head was $7,890 in 1995 when the UK had a figure of $17,970 and in Switzerland it was $36,410. The capital city, Lisbon, is modern and prosperous in lots of ways, but in more remote areas, especially in the north, things are very different.

The fishing village of Afurada, for example, lies at the mouth of the river Douro on the coast of Northern Portugal. It’s about as far west in Europe as you can go. An outpost, left almost untouched by the tide of development that has swept across the rest of the European Union. Shopping is still done face to face. Each day there’s direct contact between the people and the produce. Doing the weekly wash is also a social event. Anyone can use the stone tubs and anyone can hang clothes out to dry in the nearby field, with no fear of them being stolen.

On a continent where things become more modern and more the same everyday, this region is still traditional and different. Further inland, you can live in regions that produce Port Wine, and it is very pretty but hard going. Just as the vine have created a special landscape they have also shaped the lives of those who live here; to such an extent, that the local people have been forced to make a hard choice. They either stay at home and work in agriculture, tending the grapes for low wages, or travel abroad to find a better standard of living elsewhere.

b) Migration from Portugal

Even now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, 35% of the Northern Portuguese people work abroad, and most of them who leave are men. With frontiers dissolving in the growing European Union, this is easier to do than ever before.

Between 1968 and 1996 about 500,000 Portuguese emigrated. The Portuguese family followed in ‘The Emigrants’ made close links with Switzerland, but most of the half million Portuguese went to France and Germany. A large proportion of this emigration is temporary: the aim being to return home to family and friends in Portugal once enough money has been saved, working in countries with higher wages and saving as much as possible. It is a clear example of ‘economic migration’.

Workers also try to return home once or twice a year to keep in touch with their families, especially for major events such as weddings and village festivals.

Many members of the Santana family belong to this community of Portuguese emigrant workers, but all travelled home to their remote village of Soutelo do Douro, high in the mountains, to celebrate a family wedding. This brought back to the Santana family-home a daughter who had been working in catering in Switzerland since the age of 14, and her elder brother – a commercially successful pop singer known for romantic ballads, who tours Portuguese communities around the world, after beginning in Switzerland.

In August many emigrants go home for their one-month summer holiday. It is second nature for them to step from the modern world of their jobs abroad to the traditional world of a religious procession in their home village.

c) Staying home – the other option

While half a million Portuguese, mostly young men, see sole emigration as the only way forward, others, who aren’t listed in any statistics, decide that ‘quality of life’ has more to do with staying put. One month at home and eleven months abroad is the usual pattern of the emigrants’ working year, and this lifestyle often puts families under a lot of stress, but with local wages so low and jobs few and far between, working abroad is almost the only option for those who want to get ahead. Others, including another member of the Santana family, think that if husbands or both partners go abroad and leave their children here with relatives, it can never be the same. His view is that if parents and children are apart for too long they never get to know each other very well: they will remain strangers and never be a truly united family.

Manuel Santana chose not to emigrate. He had the opportunity to emigrate but he went abroad on holiday with some friends and didn’t like it. He always felt uncomfortable, always felt like a foreigner. And his ambition was never to learn a lot of money; he sees the local area as his little corner, and that is where he wants to stay. Manuel works as a vineyard manager and his working year follows the traditional growing cycle. By August the grapes are almost ready to be harvested. There’s not much Manuel and his workers can do but wait. So life in Soutelo do Douro settles down to the relaxed pace of summer traditions. Summer is also the time of the village fiesta based on a celebration of the local saint.