On February 26, 2018, Portugal Post issued a series of postage stamps (4 stamps and a souvenir sheet) dedicated to the Tagus River.
The Tagus is the largest river on the Iberian Peninsula, more than a thousand kilometers long. It flows through Spain and Portugal and empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Lisbon. In Portugal, the Tagus River flows through twenty-nine municipalities, flowing through many cities and districts. About 3.5 million people - more than one third of the population of Portugal - live in areas where this river flows.
The release of postage stamps emphasizes the great importance of this river not only as a natural object, but also as an economic and even cultural factor influencing many areas of Portuguese life.
On the postage stamps, picturesque views of the river in different regions are adjacent to bright recognizable objects present in the places through which the Tagus flows.
Campino of Ribatejo
The second stamp in the series captures the wide riverbed in the historic province of Ribatejo. The Tagus River runs through this region, and even the name Ribatejo translates as "banks of the Tagus". The fertile soils of the wide river valley provide excellent conditions for agriculture, and the floodplains are used to breed the famous Portuguese black bulls for toradas (the Portuguese version of bullfighting) and beautiful horses.
Ribatejo is the land of shepherds, here they are called "campinos". As decades ago, Portuguese shepherds look after large herds of black bulls, grazing freely on the wide plains along the banks of the river. Campinos work on horses, using a long pole to control the animals and direct the herd.
The local shepherds have an unusually colorful festive costume, which has remained unchanged for more than a hundred years and during this time has become one of the calling cards of the province of Ribatejo. The traditional costume of the campino from Ribatejo consists of a white shirt with a red waistcoat, dark blue knee-length trousers and white stockings, the shepherd wears black boots with spurs and a bright green cap with a pompom on his head.
It is the campino in the traditional costume on horseback who is depicted on the €0.70 postage stamp. In the background, the famous bridge over the Tagus in Santarém is visible. The postage stamp was created using photographs from the Lisbon Municipal Archives (photographers Amadeu Ferrari, Maurício Abreu).
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