Macedo Papança, the Conde de Monsaraz, was the son of a wealthy farmer who later became a nobleman. He was born in 1852 in the Alentejo village of Reguengos de Monsaraz and spent his childhood there. He completed a law degree at the University of Coimbra, but wrote poetry from a young age. With his personal charm and intimate knowledge of the region, the Conde de Monsaraz, was perhaps the writer who really put the Alentejo on the literary map. His work moves from an early Parnassianism towards a more nationalist ruralism and Neo-Romanticism in his later writing. He writes about the moors and the hills, the colourful life of the villages, the immensity of the Alentejo plains, and echoes the voices of the people. He always pursued politics and writing in parallel. He was selected as the Évora representative of the House of Peers and was later the Portuguese ambassador to the Universal Peace Congress in Paris. He won lots of recognition and was awarded various honours, including being elected to the Academia Real das Ciências de Lisboa and the Academia Brasileira de Letras. He was a stalwart monarchist and went into exile after Portugal was proclaimed a republic in 1910. He returned to his homeland to die in 1913.
You may find his poetry in…
Si hay en Portugal un lugar donde el tiempo y el espacio se disponen de forma diferente, con una pulsación peculiar y una luz esencial que parecen llevarnos fuera del propio tiempo y el espacio, ese lugar, sin duda, es el Alentejo.
If there is a place in Portugal where time and space work differently, where things have their own unique rhythm, and where the quality of the light seems to transport the visitor to another realm, then that place is most certainly the Alentejo.
