Minho is a historic province in the northern region of Portugal, which was
part of the former province Entre Douro e Minho and which was formally
confirmed by an administrative reform in 1936. It comprises the Baixo Minho
and Alto Minho regions. However, the provinces never had a practical
attribution, therefore they disappeared from the administrative vocabulary
(although not from the daily vocabulary of the Portuguese) with the entry
into force of the 1976 Constitution, passing the region, in this case
inserted in the so-called Northern Region, with its sub-regions of Cávado,
Ave and Minho-Lima.
It is from this Minho region that most of the
Portuguese who colonized Brazil from the 18th century onwards emerged.
Amares
Barcelos
Braga
Caminha
Castro Laboreiro
Esposende
Lindoso
Melgaço
Monção
Mujães
Ponte de Lima
Soajo
Valença
Viana do Castelo
Vieira do Minho
Vila Nova de
Cerveira
Peneda-Gerês National Park
North Coast Natural Park
Cabeceiras de Basto - A beautiful village in the interior of the county, whose main monument is the Monastery of Refojos de Basto, with an amazing main altar with 18th-century gilded carving, which also serves as the Town Hall. Another point of interest is the Basto - a very old statue, in castrejo style.
It was bordered to the north and northeast by Galicia,
Spain (by the provinces of Pontevedra and Ourense, respectively), to the
east by Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, to the south by the Douro Litoral
and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
It was made up of
twenty-three municipalities, integrating the entire districts of Braga
and Viana do Castelo. It had its headquarters in the city of Braga.
If the province in question still existed, it would probably have
twenty-four municipalities, since in the meantime a new municipality had
been created in the area of the Braga district: Vizela (in 1998, by
secession from Guimarães).
For some geographers, this province —
together with the Douro Litoral — formed a larger geographical unit:
Between Douro and Minho. On the other hand, it could be divided into two
regions: Alto Minho (corresponding to the district of Viana do Castelo)
and Baixo Minho (corresponding to the district of Braga). Braga was the
capital of Entre Douro e Minho, and later of Minho, a fact documented by
several atlases and maps of the time, including, Historical Geography of
all the Sovereign States of Europe of 1736, Atlas Historique by A.
Lesage of 1809 or the Geographical and Statistical Map of Spain and
Portugal of 1821.
Today, its territory is located in the
statistical region of the North, divided between the entire sub-regions
of Minho-Lima and Cávado, and partially by the sub-regions of Ave
(municipalities of Guimarães, Póvoa de Lanhoso, Vieira of Minho, Vila
Nova de Famalicão and Vizela) and Tâmega (two municipalities of the
Lands of Basto, namely Cabeceiras and Celorico de Basto).
District of Braga:
District of Viana do Castelo:
The most important cities are:
Braga
Guimaraes
Valença
Viana do Castelo
New Town of Famalicao
Barcelos
Fafe
In his romantic work "O Minho Pitoresco", by José
Augusto Vieira at the end of the 19th century, he specifically states
that: «O Minho! The garden of Portugal!» He adds that it was common in
his time to “hear this province referred to as the most populous and
most active, the most picturesque and the most hospitable, the most
abundant bosom of traditions that individualize a nationality, a land
where vegetation is luxuriant… .
The cradle where Portuguese
nationality was cradled, Minho has the sacred tabernacle of our ethnic
traditions, subversive and revolutionary in times of great national
crises, cultivator of the land in the bucolic tranquility of peace, … .
Elisée Reclus in his Géographie Universelle .. writes: «.. the
Minhotos are the best inhabitants of Portugal, both for their sweetness
of character, for their joy and cordiality; Their dances and songs have
already caused an author to compare them to true shepherds of
Theocritus.'
Almost all Minho residents are landowners and there
are many of them.
Thanks to this enfeoffment of the soil, ..,
almost all the valleys and hills of Northern Lusitania are cultivated
like a garden. The Minho is truly a garden, rising to the east by the
Peneda, Gerês, Cabreira and Marão mountains, where it borders
Trás-os-Montes, and which, as it were, isolate the continental
orographic system, and breaking off to the west, in the gentle curve of
the plains, against the edge of that great blue lake — the Atlantic.'