Cross-border relations: the frontier of peace

Generally, relations between the border folk (rayanos) have been fluid and peaceful. Some writers maintain there was a border culture in the Spanish Portuguese Raya. Said culture would be typified, according to Luís Uriarte, by «a fluid socio-cultural permeability which structures a symmetrical interdependence based on complementation and interdepence».

As we said at the beginning, this is the frontier of trade and traditional smuggling, of «reyertas» (disputed area) and «povos promicuos»; it is the magical and festive border of portuñol (Spantuguese) and cross-border alliances, the border of everyday life; a place for mutual encounters and understanding, fuelled by the pressing need of daily life, but also by the curiosity and attraction which foreign things arouse, by the seductiveness of nearby, unknown things.

The «reyertas» (refertas) are condominiums, inter-border areas which usually allow shared usage by natives of both countries. In the context we are examining, usage and exploitation of these borderlands are regulated by habit; and they were generally meeting points of shared usage which reflected and symbolised that other way of being and living on the border. The «povos promiscuos» were built on the very limit of Spain with Portugal with houses in both countries. The best known were three villages (Soutelinho da Raia, Cambedo and Lamadarcos) located between Ourense (Spain) and Chaves (Portugal); they became fully integrated into Portugal after the Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 1864.  In the geographical context of this work, we find that there are still similar cases, like the Casas de la Duda (Houses of Doubt), located on the edge of the municipal boundary of Valencia de Alcántara, on the border itself.