‘Lately, I have been frequenting bad houses…’

from ‘Bad Houses’ by Big Black

Portuguese houses, now they’re a thing. Why are they colder indoors than it is outdoors?! What is it with both the lack of proper heating and the insane levels of condensation? Especially if the house is up a mountain. No wonder dehumidifiers fly out of the shops. And why are so many older properties built to avoid the sun, and so they get no natural warmth in addition to no heating? Seriously, breath before your eyes all evening long once you are out of the May to September period. Wood burners are a common source of heating, but if you put them in the corner of a room they really struggle to project any warmth. And that is without considering the environmental and personal health damage they can cause. Lovely and warm to look at, but if you are more than a few feet away a bit useless. None of this is helped by the tendency to have every floor made from chilling, unforgiving tiles. Rugs. You need rugs. Thick rugs. And then the round red braziers which we were told by our newfound friends you put under a table with a cloth over it so the air under there warms up, and then you sit around it with legs and feet nestled under both cloth and table. Not the most relaxing arrangement. Works though, in a specific and geographically limited manner as the rest of the room retains its fridge-like qualities. Should have listened and believed sooner.

It’s something that you have to go outdoors in January to warm up in Portugal.

When we were at the coast just south of Porto a few weeks ago a group of British people could be heard discussing how cold their houses were (-3!) and they had come to the beachside cafe where we were sitting simply to get warm. So, not just a problem up mountains then*.

And why all this ramshackle space underneath houses? Frequently what appears as two stories is in fact one, with just stuff of variable origin stored beneath. Why the waste of space and invitation to wildlife? It’s odd, what looks like a house is in effect a flat. I get that it’s like a cultural or historical echo, from farming and the need of some kind of self-sufficiency or subsistence, with a workshop, or an area to store your own-grown barrelled wine, or space to process, brine and marinate the olives from your tree’s (or turn them into oil). Or perhaps a store room for vegetable garden produce, and various pieces of equipment. But in the middle of a city or suburban area, or as part of the new whitewashed modular, modernist influenced concrete and glass houses (that I must say I have taken a liking to) and pop up in all sorts of places?

And then the estate agent pictures as props for sale or rental. This is a unique and peculiar art form in Portugal. Hours of fun can be had trawling sites and gawping at what is deemed fine to sell a property. Dirty laundry strewn around, no problem. Rooms stacked high with boxes of detritus, no problem. Unwashed dishes with the remains of a meal, fine. Discarded bicycle in the bedroom, ok. A muddied tractor parked in the living room, got that. Decorating material haphazardly lying around, uh huh. A goat in the garden, sure. How about a blurred dog dancing across the photo of the living room? Covered it. A sludge filled swimming pool. A picture of a closed garage door, from the inside. A pointless picture of the current owner’s car. All done. A kitchen table with a half-finished bottle of Macieira on it, of course. An outdoor tap protruding from a wall, I mean, come on! Taking pictures with the curtains or shutters closed and insipid, dim lights on, yup. Or photos of the outside of the house taken into the sun, so that all you can really see is, well, the sun. And please, the decor! Lime green kitchen, blood red bathroom, luminous yellow bedroom – how do you sleep in that! Inexplicably large rooms that leave you wondering how in hell you would heat them. And bars. So many houses have their own bars. I have to say, this is definitely an attraction. Or simply photos of the garden, a pathway or view, with no sight of the house at all, unless it is a quinta at a tempting price that overlooks the river in which case it’s pictures of unmanaged trees, rotting vines on collapsing terracing, an unkempt access track, one of the glimpse of a bend in the Douro that counts as a river view, and a house of two and a half walls and no roof. Perhaps this is just a less prim, more everyday honest way of selling a house. Less pretence. Perhaps this is how it should be done.

Anyway, as the sun tracks behind the house casting everything into cold shade and shadow I will retire to the live-in fridge and entertain myself by perusing pictures of properties. You never know, I might come across a warm looking one.

Adrian, April 2023

*February 2024 update: we have discovered that central heating is a thing here, and we have it in our apartment here near Porto. Gas is incredibly expensive, though, so it's been lucky that we've had an exceptionally warm winter - although I recognise this is a very short-term gain for what is no doubt much longer-term gain :( [Michelle]

#portuguesehouseslivinginportugal