(Plus green and white)Buildings in the Alentego region of Portugal are invariably white. They often have a band around windows, doors, and at the base of the walls. This is either yellow or blue. Not just any yellow or blue. A specific earthy yellow ochre, or a blue that seems to occupy the platonic middle. Not a tone of blue, just pure blue. The windows and doors may be varnished wood, hunter green, or dark red. That’s it.
We first saw these colors in well-preserved medieval hill towns where they may well be legislated into being: some top-down application of either tradition or quaint homogeneity. Less expectedly, run-of-the mill postwar towns seemed to have the same strict color scheme. We wondered if local paint stores only carry four cans. Or if, in contrast to the vast menagerie of American paint chips with pseudo-evocative names like Sonora Sunrise or Velvet Tango, one simply walks into a paint store and asks for yellow, blue or red- with the shared understanding that each is a cultural consensus, not a range of tones.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to any paint stores. The mystery remains.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to any paint stores. The mystery remains.
