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Tradition says that health is the right measure between heat and cold, and it was also in this balance that Simon and Joelle found happiness. While, in the Pyrenees, the light snowflakes lightly cool the body and spirit, the French couple snuggles on Lusitanian soil, proving that life is wine, foam, yeast, and that dreams are meant to be fulfilled like a colorful ball in perpetual motion. They are unaware of these references to poems by Augusto Gil and António Gedeão, but they have already inscribed the temperate climate and human warmth in the ode to their second country. As in the national anthem, they recognize in this noble people the splendor of Portugal – a valiant and immortal nation; sculpted legend over land and sea; echo of boldness against the insults of luck; memory, present and what is yet to come.

 

Simon Gringras and Joelle Clarens

From Toulouse and Tarbes, in France

73 and 65 years old

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From a fourth floor with large glass doors to the balcony, Simon and Joelle have views over trees and quietness. The pace of Paços de Brandão is calm and, close to Quinta do Engenho Novo, the forests hide most of the industrial activity, announcing civilization only by the cars that, at some distance, tear through he patches of greenery and earth. She was very explicit when they decided to move to Portugal: the apartment had to be high, with no view of roads or parking spaces; the area had to be calm and quiet, but close to the cities of Aveiro and Porto; and the house had to include a white kitchen, because wooden furniture in France was enough. “If you knew what I suffered with her requirements…! Mais ce que les femmes veux, Dieu veut! What women want, God wants!”, he explains.

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The couple sees the conversation for Imaginarius almost as an essay on “Portugality” – something very typical that only gives more color to the whole experience that, for six months each year, allows them to exchange the snow and cold of the Pyrenees for the two categories of temperature that exist in Portugal: “the warmth of meteorology and the warmth of hospitality”. They still know very little of the national language because, as Joelle notices, “concentration is more and more difficult with age”, but all around the house there are books proving their commitment to this learning, such as dictionaries, grammars and conversation guides. “Tranquillité”, “securité” and “repos” are French words that appear often in their speech, evoking the main feelings motivated by the country to which they emigrated.

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Simon came here for the first time about 20 years ago, when he was still married, and right away he loved our warm weather, our traditional food and the “high, strong and wonderful waves” of the Atlantic coast. He still worked as a real estate agent, but, when he later found himself divorced and retired, he began to cherish the idea of ​​taking refuge in Portuguese soil and enjoying the pleasures that only seniority allows. First, however, he tried to find a girlfriend. It was 2005 and there was still no Tinder, but Microsoft's MSN had already proved how easy it was to make friends on the internet and that's how he met the hotel assistant with whom he would end up sharing his life. Only now do they notice that they were pioneers in virtual romanticism – again the heat of passion, there you have it! – and laugh together at the memory of all the expectations about their first real meeting, after years of chatting online. Infatuated, they started with long-distance dating and he says that wasn’t too difficult, because “when you love, distance doesn't count”. Better convinced, they started living together in her house, in Tournous-Devant, and it’s at the mention of snowy winters that they show their complicity, complaining in unison. “It's just that I don't get along with the cold! It's not worth it!”, acknowledges Joelle.

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When, one day, French television broadcast a documentary about Aveiro, she fell in love again, deciding that this would be the destination of their next trip. When she finds herself actually strolling by the estuary’s channels and the striped houses of Costa Nova, she then arrived at the idea that life is not to be spent on ice. "That's when I sold my house so I could buy an apartment in Portugal," says Simon. "Now we stay here from October to April, when France is too cold, and we only go back there in the summer, when we can enjoy the most pleasant time in the countryside, among the birds and trees".

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There are many advantages to this bustle of flights, suitcases and baggage: the constant change keeps the two great-grandparents more active and lively; the family meetings become more intense, whether in one country or another; he enriched his culinary repertoire with Portuguese dishes such as roasted ham and caldo verde; she feels like an eternal tourist in her eagerness to visit different Portuguese cities. “The first time I was in Portugal it was Faro that I visited, but I didn't like it”, she says, tactfully, trying not to hurt. “That is not Portugal – it’s more the United States, Nice or Saint-Tropez. C’est pas typique! This is our Portugal: Paços de Brandão, Porto, Viseu…”.

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Even so, they cannot explain how they ended up settling in Santa Maria da Feira, in June 2018. Was it due to the central location of the municipality, halfway between Oporto and the city known for the sweet ‘ovos moles’? Was it because they’d be relatively close to friends living in Braga without losing the easy access to the beach? Was it because the apartment in Paços was the one that most convinced them in their real estate search? Was it because fate has a sense of humor, as one can tell after knowing that they chose to reside in the municipality where Joelle came to find the very same hairdresser who took care of her hairdo in Tarbes and who now has a salon in this pseudo-metropolis that is Lourosa? “Ma coiffeur c’est Patrícia Pereira”, says the Frenchwoman, laughing. "Le monde est petit!". Tiny indeed, the world.

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Pointing out the Oporto's traffic at the Arrábida Bridge, at rush hour, as “the worst and most horrible thing” that they have encountered in Portugal, the fact is that Simon and Joelle feel comfortable and cherished here. On the one hand, they find in Santa Maria da Feira a safer environment than in Lisbon and Oporto, enjoying their daily lives without fear of being robbed or attacked. On the other hand, they now live with less financial restraint, since in Portugal “essential goods such as grocery products are 40% cheaper than in France”. There’s also the advantage of finding at every corner the picturesque of a new country – “the open-air markets, the ladies dressed in black…” – and the benefit of feeling they have longer and calmer days thanks to the current commercial practices – since, normally, "supermarkets only close at midnight and that’s great to extend the days and to avoid being in a hurry all the time". The best of all, even so, is that “people are really, really kind”. Even in Arrábida, at rush hour. “We had a breakdown in the central lane, right in the middle of the bridge, and we were interrupting the whole traffic, but nobody blew their horn,” states Simon, still surprised. “We called for the assistance and they came quickly, but we were still there for about 10 minutes and nobody treated us badly. In France everyone would have started to honk!”.

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It is in the daily routine, however, that the two French better identify the differences between the essentials of civic behavior in one country and another. “Here we are always amazed at the straightforwardness and friendliness of people”, says Simon. “Just the other day, a neighbor saw me bringing a small cabinet home and offered to take it to the elevator. I still thought he was just going to help and that was already great, but he took the cabinet off my hands, took it all the way and this is phenomenal!”. When the septuagenarian needs a cane to walk on the street, courtesies continue. “I ordered tea at the Pingo Doce store and, as I was using a cane, a lady brought me the tray to the table. And in France it is not like that!”.

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Simon and Joelle hesitate a little when they wonder if this graciousness is motivated solely by their foreign accent and because they’re seen not as residents, but as tourists… They prefer to think that is not the case and to believe these manifestations of civility are genuine, mainly because that provides them with unprecedented experiences such as being invited by a restaurant employee to visit the establishment’s kitchen and to choose on sight the fish they still can’t identify by name on the menu. They’ve already realized that language is not a problem. “In Portugal everyone speaks English and, even those who don’t, they can either understand French or my little Spanish, or they’ll do everything by signs, as happened once in a pharmacy, where no-one spoke anything but Portuguese, but they tried to understand me and I ended up leaving with a really good medicine”, states Joelle.

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Among all this humanity, there’s only one thing that the couple doesn’t understand: the resistance of the Portuguese who, having been emigrants in France, avoid letting people know that it was in that country that they made their lives, before returning here with a more comfortable and generous retirement pension. “We often happen to be beside someone who pretends not to know French, but who ends up helping us, a little grudgingly, because he really understands everything we say”, Simon explains. “I think that’s the case with those people who worked in France for many years in construction, for example, and don't want to remember that stage of their lives or to have other people know about it. It’s difficult for us to understand that attitude ... Is it shame? Is it disgruntlement with the French, who are lazy, don’t accept certain jobs and may have been rude to them? These ex-emigrants should own up to their past. They worked hard in very difficult areas, they made money, built their houses, helped their family and today they live better than their parents did. They were brave, they moved up in life and they should be proud of it”. Many others have boasted more for a lot less. ■

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