This walk will introduce us to the parish of Santo Isidro de Pegões in the municipality of Montijo. A land steeped in history, where the old Royal Road used to pass through, it is currently still an agricultural and wine-growing area, with several flower nurseries. Also noteworthy is the beautiful landscape provided by the Pegões Dam. Another event not to be missed!

Santo Isidro de Pegões

Its historical roots are scarce. However, as it is located close to the Royal Road that linked Lisbon via Aldeia Galega to Badajoz, it benefited from the importance that this link had in communications with the south of the country, and thus saw the passage of several illustrious monarchs and passengers. Of these, we can highlight, among others, the Duke of Bragança, D. Jaime, and his son, D. Teodósio, on their journeys between Vila Viçosa and Lisbon.

Already in this century, the land was ploughed to make way for an internal colonisation project drawn up between 1937/38 by agronomists Mário Pereira and Henrique de Barros, using the land belonging to the Herdade de Pegões Velhos. This estate belonged to José Rovisco Pais, who tried to set up a colonisation project there based on what José Maria dos Santos had done in Rio Frio, in order to establish the agricultural wage labour needed for the large farms in the area. When he died in 1932, he donated the remaining land to the Civil Hospitals of Lisbon. However, the Junta de Colonização Interna (Internal Colonisation Board) ended up developing a completely different settler project to the one inaugurated by Rovisco Pais.

The Herdade de Pegões, with around 4,700 hectares, was then divided into agricultural couples with an average area of eighteen hectares, equipped with housing and agricultural facilities, irrigation works and communication routes. Each couple was given eleven hectares of rainfed land, four of vineyards, one of irrigated land and two of pine forest. They were also entitled to receive a cow, a calf, a mare, a cart with implements and a loan of six thousand escudos from the Colonisation Board. These facilities meant that, from 1952, five years after work began on transforming the estate, 207 settlers and their families settled there.

The settlement, whose architectural project was designed by the architect Eugénio Correia, also had other collective infrastructures such as primary schools, social centres, medical centres, reservoirs and a church. Later, in 1958, the Agricultural Cooperative was set up.

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- Santo Isidro de Pegões - Pegões Fountain - Pegões Dam - Santo Isidro Church - Vineyards - Pegões Cooperative Winery - Natural landscapes -