I’m just driving along a bit, and actually a bit too fast, when suddenly an oncoming car flashes its headlights. Oh! I snap out of my nice-driving rhythm, because this means something. What was it again? Oh right!
Watch out, GNR in ambush
I don’t drive that much, and the GNR is lying in ambush less and less these days, so this feels a bit nostalgic. When I first started driving around here, it happened regularly. Back then I drove a lot more, and everything wasn’t automated yet. The police – I don’t know what else you should call the Guarda Nacional Republicana, the National Republican Guard – still did everything themselves, manually, with a ticket book and a pen and such.
The first time it happened to me, I didn’t understand those flashing oncoming cars at all. Is something going on? Is my bumper drooping? Have I lost my license plate? Aren’t they used to foreign license plates? Do I know you? Is my skirt tucked into my underwear? What’s wrong?
I stopped, got out, and walked around the car. Nothing was wrong. Huh?
The next time I was surprised again, but less so, of course, because now I knew it meant something, but what exactly? A little further down the road stood a GNR car with two caricatures of police officers in front of it. They were standing with their legs spread wide, wearing aviator sunglasses and a thick moustache underneath, looking masculine.
I was allowed to pass. At that time, the Portuguese government hadn’t yet invested so heavily in English language education, so many Portuguese might have spoken French, but not English. And since I clearly looked foreign – at first site: probably English – I was never stopped. They were careful not to embarrass themselves.
I asked my colleagues at the real estate agency where I worked at the time about that signal. They started laughing and teasing me: “Shall we initiate her then? It looks like she’s staying … so surely she’s allowed to know?” (That teasing was all in English, mind you, because my Portuguese wasn’t exactly great back then.)
That signal means the GNR is lying in ambush
Ah! Oh, I thought it was so beautiful. Such solidarity! “Does that perhaps stem from the dictatorship?” I asked a colleague I was a bit closer to, because I knew it was quite a sensitive subject. The dictatorship was still fairly fresh in everyone’s memory – it was only 25 years ago, so plenty of people in the prime of their lives had experienced it.
And we don’t talk about that anymore. The GNR naturally has nothing to do with the PIDE, the secret police during the dictatorship, but it has everything to do with authority. The men of the GNR looked a lot like the Guarda Civil of Franco’s Spain back then. They stood there looking the same when you crossed the border between France and Spain.
You really didn’t want to get into trouble with them!
Back to the present day. Once the penny dropped, I shifted down – way too much – so that I drove past the GNR car, which was parked on the other side of the road, with a roaring engine and squealing brakes. Not really nice and inconspicuous. Not a soul in sight. I drove on, and flashed at everyone coming towards me. You do that for about four or five cars, and then, of course, you stop. Then it’s the next person’s turn.
But I believe the GNR realizes that this is happening too …
.
(Disclaimer: I’m a bit tired of the keyword stuff and Google’s dictatorship. So here they are, and I’m also hoping for the cleverness of AI in this matter that it will still be found and read, but that I don’t have to force myself to use the right terms in the title and headings. #GNR #portugesepolice #tickets )
We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal. We started to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa.You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere. Since Covid we rent the houses for a longer period of time, not as holiday houses anymore.
Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation.
In the weekend we publish it on Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.