On March 6, 2020, the Baldios de Cabril Managing Board submitted Carrejadas' application to the 7 Folk Culture Wonders award in the Rituals and Customs category. The nomination was awarded the following month.
The 7 Folk Culture Wonders award has been created to promote Portugal's cultural heritage - both in its material and immaterial forms - and to raise our traditions to the status of a public cause. The challenge consists of celebrating and extolling the experience of this heritage, and of choosing the best things that Portugal has to offer, by emphasizing the finest traditions in each of the country's various regions.
The Baldios de Cabril organization is reviving a century-old tradition in Serra do Gerês, the so-called "carrejadas" with rye.
Rye is sown in September, after the animals descend to the villages. The seed hibernates in the winter and awakens in the spring. The crop is ready for harvesting in August, after which it will be threshed on the mountain's natural threshing floors. Once the rye has been threshed, villagers must bring back the seeds, the straw, the thatch, the implements, the pots, and all other goods they had brought with them before. All these things down the mountain, on the backs of men, women, and animals. This journey is known as 'carrejada'.
The Carrejadas project encompassed 500 direct beneficiaries and 1,013,450 indirect beneficiaries.
Besides their invaluable historical, social and cultural importance, the various agricultural tasks that precede the 'carrejada' bear witness to the way of life of a people who have always lived and survived with few resources and in a constant struggle against natural forces. They also show the character of a people who do not give in to the harshness of the mountain to secure its survival, and which lives up to the uses and customs inherited from its ancestors. All this work is carried out as a community, while celebrating its various stages.
'Carrejadas' are therefore unique traditions of this people, and are believed to date back to the 16th century.
The Traditions Program is very important for local communities, as it provides financial support to such traditions and celebrates the culture of each region. This incentive makes it possible to revive ancient practices that are vanishing or at the risk of being forgotten.
Stay tuned for the next phases of this selection process.
Other projects that have been nominated for the 7 Folk Culture Wonders award:
3rd Edition - Music and Dance Category
'Bombos Lavacolhos'
Knowing that it is of paramount importance to preserve and protect the specificities of Drum Groups and the knowledge associated with the manufacture of drums, boxes and fifes by some local artisans, Fundão Town Hall decided to open a museum called 'Casa do Bombo' and submitted a request to list the manufacture of drums and boxes from the municipality in the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory.
The goal is to carry out actions that will make it possible for local artisans to impart this unique knowledge through training sessions, build a workshop for the manufacture of these instruments, and study this process in order to secure its preservation.
2nd Edition - Artifacts Category
'Flores da Romaria Santa Luzia'
The Santa Luzia Pilgrimage is one of the most important and popular pilgrimages in Beira Baixa, yet some of its unique features have been in decline in recent years.
This project aims to preserve the Pilgrimage's rich heritage, namely by offering training sessions on the art of arranging Santa Luzia flowers, promoting their dissemination and sale, preserving built heritage in the area where the Pilgrimage takes place, studying, inventorying and handling the Pilgrimage's Intangible Cultural Heritage, and disseminating this tradition's internally, externally and intergenerationally.
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