"In no other province of the country can one encounter so perfect a symbiosis of Portugal's general characteristics - both geographic and anthropological - as in the Ribatejo.
The region, lying at the heart of the country, is solely historic in its origins, for its geography does not form a homogeneous whole, one with perfectly delimited boundaries. Moreover, of Portugal's eleven provinces only the Algarve has remained determined and unchanged, in a history stretching back over nine centuries, However, it is here in the Ribatejo that geographic centrality allows - through the body of the river Tagus - the merge into just one single country of territories as distinct and diverse as the North and the South of Portugal."
Helder Pinho
The bull, the horse and the campino are "the specific product of the lands of the Ribatejo" and "in the articulation of the three sides of the triangle - the campino, the horse and the bull - there come together Portugal’s remaining virile forces, left over from the spare time of the Creation, of the wild, testicular eras that civilisation has castrated".
Miguel Torga
Publisher: Maurício Abreu and Região de Turismo do Ribatejo
Project and production of the book: Maurício Abreu
Photography by Maurício Abreu
Introduction text by Helder Pinho
Texts by Carlos Malheiro Dias, José Manuel Fernandes, Francisco Câncio, Almeida Garrett, Miguel Torga, António Manuel Couto Viana, Fialho de Almeida
Design by José Teófilo Duarte
English version by Peter F. Ingham
1st edition: December 1997
ISBN: 972-95897-3-9
Size: 23,5 x 31 cm; 80 pages
107 colour photographs
