Afonso Cruz, one of Portugal’s most prolific writers, devoted some of his time to rediscovering the Center of Portugal.
Afonso Cruz is a writer and multidisciplinary artist who was born in 1971, in Figueira da Foz. He has had more than thirty books published, including novels, novellas, plays, poetry, illustrated albums, photo captions, essays, and non-fiction. He has won several awards for his books, the rights to which have been sold for translation into more than twenty languages.
The young flamingos are white or greyish, while the older ones prefer to dress in pink.
When she found out I was a writer, she immediately confessed that she had a poetic streak and that one day I would have to write a book about Nazaré. “I even have a title for it,” she said. “The rich poor and the poor rich.”
I complimented the title and wordplay, and she, always verbose, gave her opinion:
“Each person is born for who they are.”
I tried some of the dried fish she was selling and I bought three or four of the smallest. “How is it possible,” she asked, “that a fishmonger can love jazz and opera? Something is not right here.”
“It’s all good,” I assured her.
“My father died more than eighty times.”
“How is that possible?”
“When I was a child, I learned to ask the tourists in French to give me money because my father had died at sea. My father was always dying at sea. He died a lot.”
Francelina picked up a piece of fish and said, "Look at this conger's belly: cooked, you don't know what you're missing—you'd feel five years younger. Be like António Variações: eat it today, it might not be here tomorrow."
