A Praça
“Há sempre uma praça. Herdeira da ágora ateniense, do fórum romano, do rossio medieval, território comum, pausa no labirinto da malha urbana. (...) A minha praça nasceu no velho rossio, baldio e periférico, mas a cidade envolveu-a, aconchegante e protectora, à procura de um coração que nunca mais deixou de bater ali, nas pedras da calçada, ao ritmo meticuloso do relógio da torre”.
Carlos Querido in “Praça da Fruta” ed. Corrida de Letras
For centuries, local farmers have been selling their products at the daily market of Caldas da Rainha. Traditional markets, ancient form of exchange, used to play a very important role as main source of consumable goods until the proliferation of other businesses of the kind. It is still common to find them in rural areas, but over the years many things have changed: motor vehicles displaced the horses and mules from their duties, traditional scales were stored in favor of digital ones, but the most significant transformation occurred in the client's habits, who let themselves surrender to the comfort of supermarkets and the beauty of foreign fruit with identical proportions and shining surfaces.
Even though most people recognize its value as part of our cultural heritage, "a praça" is slowly disappearing. The business has seen better days but for most of the stallholders it's not all about profit. "A praça" is a meeting point for communities of farmers who live in remote villages scattered through the countryside. To fight solitude and meet old friends they keep returning everyday in spite of the physical difficulties that advanced age brings. For some of them the daily routine of arriving before 6 o'clock in the morning, unloading the merchandise, arranging the stall, setting up the sun-shade and waiting a few hours for the first costumers to arrive, has been part of their lives since they were 7 or 8 years-old. With younger generations adopting different lifestyles there is no one to continue the practice and traditional markets are becoming a shadow of what they used to be.
I grew up going to the "praça" every weekend with my mother. There I would find my grandparents selling the fruit they produce, something they still do from time to time during the harvesting season. After years living abroad I became interested on how, by allowing us to return to the places we came from, photographs can prevent us from forgetting who we are. Determined to create an alternative for memories that will inevitably become less and less detailed, I went back to my hometown and started shooting "A Praça", a project that is still in development.
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