“We weren’t forced to go back to Portugal, we wanted to.” – Editing

This week, the story of immigrants who return to their place of origin after living abroad. Today, Alda has returned to the Douro Valley after forty years in Switzerland.

After four decades in Switzerland, Alda, 66, and her husband, Francisco, returned a few years ago to Sibadli, in the Douro Valley. Well after retirement they are still working in the family harbor vineyard. Alda’s voice is warm. you talk about “success” Based on “Pride”.

“Everyone was leaving at that time, everyone. A lot of Portuguese immigrated because of the dictatorship and war in the former colonies in Africa, but they were educated people. In my village, I don’t know anyone who left for this reason. Instead, we were escaping from poverty. People collided By road secretly, traveling by night, they took a week to reach France.

My brothers and sister went to Angola, a former Portuguese colony, or to Lisbon. I had to stay with my parents. I started working at 13 in the fields. Francisco was constructive. He worked in my village, and we got to know each other like that. We went dancing at the ball on Sunday to French music brought by the first immigrants from France.

“I was 21 when we left for Switzerland. I had never left my village. We had to leave our first daughter behind. She was two years old. Francisco often talks about his early days in Switzerland. He was on a construction site, laying cobblestones On the shores of Lake Geneva. He was only dressed from here. With the wind coming from the Alps, it was unparalleled