Along the coast and the Portuguese-Spanish border, a vast defensive system developed over the centuries, comprising countless castles, towers, watchtowers, redoubts and fortified churches, in addition to the strongholds, fortresses and forts that strengthened the defence strategy for the territory as a whole and, in particular, its urban centres.
While the geographic invasion lines for inland Portugal are found in five areas – Valença do Minho, Brecha de Chaves, Ribacoa, Zebreira and Alentejo – along the coast, the areas susceptible to penetration by invaders are located around river axes where, from north to south, castles and fortresses were built, defining and characterising the humanisation of the landscape.
Today, the settlements and axes of invasion of Caminha/Valença do Minho; Viana do Castelo/ Ponte de Lima; Porto/Amarante; Vila da Feira; Figueira da Foz/Montemor-o-Velho/Coimbra; Nazaré/Porto de Mós/Ourém; Peniche/Óbidos; Cascais/Oeiras/Lisbon; Setúbal/Palmela/ Alcácer do Sal; Sagres; Lagos; Faro; and Castro Marim developed along lines that contain and protect them, shaped by belts of walls, initially medieval, and, from 1640, by fortified militaryarchitecture.
The castles, fortresses and forts on the coast were built with three fundamental purposes in mind: the protection of inhabited centres; the prevention of attempted siege and invasion; and effective and constant combat, with soldiers always at the ready within the territory to respond to acts of aggression from across the sea.
The stamp collection ‘Coastal Castles and Fortresses’ highlights the Portuguese military defensive system, strengthened along the coastline by our ancestors, with two lines of defence parallel to the coast and strategic nuclei for the protection of political centres, such as Guimarães, Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon.
The book Castelos e Fortalezas no Litoral Português (Castles and Fortresses on the Portuguese Coast) – with texts by Augusto Moutinho Borges and special contributions from Luísa Machado Ferreira, and photographs by Augusto Moutinho Borges, Fátima Loureiro, Luísa Machado Ferreira and Luís Chaves – along with the stamp collection featuring seven Portuguese castles and fortresses, take us on a coastal trip that allows us to ‘enter’ the defensive ideals of the Portuguese.
The philatelic block, showing the unique Fortress of São Julião da Barra and its exceptional cistern, focuses on the defence of the River Tagus and access to Lisbon. The stamps depict the stronghold of Caminha, with emphasis on the main church; the Fortress of São João Batista, defending the mouth of the River Douro and access to the city of Porto, protected in the past by its Fernandine Walls; the imposing stronghold of Peniche, flanking the fortress and the Forte Velho (Old Fort); the Fort of Santiago do Outão, defending the urban centre of Setúbal and access to the interior; the strategic Fortress of Sagres, as a symbol of the maritime epic started by Henry the Navigator; and Faro Castle, the political centre of the Algarve.
We end the cycle on Portuguese defence over the centuries with the two stamp collections ‘Border Castles and Fortresses’ and ‘Coastal Castles and Fortresses,’ which reflect the huge collective effort in the art of war to protect the land, a legacy of which we can be proud and which the Ministry of National Defence, through the Portuguese Commission for Military History and the Department of Tourism and Military Heritage, is increasingly keen to preserve for futurememory.
Augusto Moutinho Borges
