#ouguela

Once an important place to the defense of the Kingdom of Portugal, Ouguela has little more than 60 inhabitants today, most of them old-aged. Sooner or later, it will be a ghost-village.

The Alentejo: olive trees, yellow grass, small hills and no one around. It could be a mere cliche, but it happens to be a bit more than that.

Chimneys in Alentejo are also quite charming. Sometimes, at least as charming as the ones you find in Algarve and this is a good example that proves my theory.

Ouguela is a fortified village that stands near the border between Portugal and Spain. Once, it had a certain importance, but, nowadays, it's just an incredibly small place where only 60 people dare to live. This is the Republic Square, the center of the village - yeah, I know what you are thinking.

The Castle of Ouguela was built to defend the Portuguese borders against possible Castilian/Spanish invasions. However, sometimes, these might walls were powerless to defend themselves against the (greed of) enemies and that explains why this place was occupied for twenty years (1642-1662), during the Restoration Wars, and in 1801, during the Oranges War.

 But what we see today has very little to do with the Castle of the XIII and XIV centuries, since this fortification was extensively rebuilt during the Restoration Wars (1640-1668); the works of the XVIII Century gave this fortification its actual configuration.

The amazingly simple Parish Church of Ouguela.

Ouguela is one of many fortresses that used to guard the portuguese border. Nowadays, you can hardly say that there is a real border and that's why many of these castles (and, in some cases, villages) were abandoned.