This is such an interesting story of human intervention in a landscape. Portugal is so enticing. The wave-filled coast, the small winding roads, the curved hills, the deserted stone farm houses. And most of all the warmth and human-ness of the people.

Some people are ordained by culture to be ‘chosen’ by language, by religion, by destiny. Being chosen creates its own cultural aura. Despite their ‘great’ age of exploration and colonisation, the Portuguese seem to dismiss this as “then”. They laugh about ‘greatness’ and claim that they are all to some degree African.

But let’s go back. Way back when the Romans came and Portugal was a land of forests, of Mediterranean oak and understorey and damp soils and running water. The vast ocean cliffs were held back from decay and collapse by the weft of roots and the density of coastal vegetation protecting soils, water and people from savage winds and desiccation. 

But about 600 AD the forests were cut. Portugal was shaven and bare. However over the next 1000 years the forests grew again, nature being merciful. They re-established a strong canopy and tall trunks and tried again to protect a battered coast from Atlantic gales.

Then came the age of finding out. So tiny ships set out from Lisboa to see if the world was flat. Was there was a huge southern continent to balance the northern one? What sort of monsters existed?

The ships were barely 40 feet long but they were numerous – a fleet in fact. Hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands. They cut the forests of Portugal – again. This time they didn’t recover.

Rivers sped to the sea. Soil ran away. Many understorey plants died never to return. Animals known to live there forever, became extinct. The population grew. People went into the bare areas and planted houses of stone, built walls of stone and pushed cuttings of fig, grape, olive and pistachio into the earth when it was wet in winter. They had goats and cows; chickens an pigs and vegetable gardens. They worked very very hard with the plough and plough animals and meeting their own needs. They were poor but they had enough.

A strange thing happened to the landscape. It became an open woodland and not a forest any more. It became drier and hotter, so they changed their crops. When the cool, wet winters came the people pushed cuttings of fig, olive, pistachio, grape into the damp soil and now although it look green and looked treed, it was half the size of the original forest.

The people had made a new cultivated ecosystem downgrading from forest to woodland but it looked natural. People accepted it but it could not sustain farming.

Homes, farms and villages were deserted in the 1970s for cities where there were more resources and life was easier. The foreigners came, mainly the English, needing warmth and openness and the blue skies. They became the economy and saved Portugal from financial disaster. The Portuguese welcomed them and included them. The EC changed standards from toilets to roads. A new time of ease arrived. Rich, Portuguese and foreigners bought and refitted some houses and added garages.

Now the olives, grapes, pistachios, figs and stones houses and walls were deserted. The walls weathered. The trees lived and became a native landscape. Olives grew up, unplanted, in the middle of pistacios which protected them. Some streams flowed a little longer each season. Soils started to accumulate under the trees.

Nature was adjusting and responding with a new eco-system. But the coasts and cliffs fell away into the Atlantic Ocean. Every year huge swathes of soil and rock fall off the edge of the country and the coast is littered with landfalls.

With the GFT in 2008, the good life suddenly collapsed. Jobs were lost, banks failed, prices rose. The people were shocked. They had taught their children to expect a good and every improving future.

Now the young graduates were out of work. It seemed likely to them that they may never have employment. Permaculture arrived among some young people. They learned. The pioneers among them went back to find their family villages. They perma-occupy. They paint, dug, plant, build walls, harvest sun and water start markets. They are also working with nature who tries, as always to restore Earth’s forests.

Another Portugal is about to be grown.