Saints, Sardines, and the Long Light of June
On the evening of 12 June, in the Alfama, you can smell Lisbon before you see it. The whole hill smells of burning oil and salt and basil, of pine charcoal that has been alight too long, of beer warming in plastic cups. The smoke is everywhere — drifting up the narrow lanes, hanging in the laundry strung between the windows, settling into the stones. By the time you have climbed three flights of street, you have, in some practical sense, already eaten. This is the eve of Santo António, and Lisbon is, for one night, an enormous outdoor sardine restaurant. The festa proper begins on the 13th, but the cooking begins the night before, because something on the order of thirteen million sardines will be eaten across Portugal during the festival period, and you cannot grill thirteen million sardines in a single day. So the small portable grills appear on every street corner, the men with tongs and the women with paper plates, the queues that move slowly because everyone knows everyone els...
