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This year, there were more people on the beach than in the water, to celebrate the first day of the year, but the irreducible adherents to this tradition entered without fear, shouting, arms in the air and splashing in the small waves.
Filomena, 63, a resident of Oeiras, was overflowing with happiness, lying on the sand by the sea, like a child. “It’s a lot of fun,” he told the Lusa agency.
The bather explained that she has been performing this ritual for 14 years and that it is rare for her to catch a cold.
“This is to kill ‘the covid’, to see if it goes away with the cold. There is no covid that beats us,” he said.
By 2021, Filomena called for “a lot of peace and a lot of health and that the pandemic disappears quickly. And that people have a minimum of attention and care to take precautions.”
On the beach, and with a towel on his shoulder, Joaquim Tomás, 74, from Lisbon, told the Lusa agency that he is a regular swimmer in winter, two to three times a week, for health reasons, after having performed various operations on the heart.
“The tension has dropped and I feel healthier,” he said.
For Joaquim Tomás, this routine doesn’t make much sense, not even on the first day of the year.
“For me everything is going well, I have nothing to regret. I still want the pandemic to pass and for the country to return to what it used to be, a country of tourists – I worked in tourism. We need tourists, although sometimes people complain”, said.
For Mariana and her four-year-old daughter, Sofía, this was the first time they dived into the sea at the start of a new year.
He emigrated to Switzerland more than thirty years ago, he is in Portugal to visit his parents and took the opportunity to take a bath on the beach, where the water temperature was around 15 degrees and the atmospheric temperature this morning was nine degrees. “This is a great time!” He exclaimed.
“We learned about this tradition, which is lucky, to bathe on January 1, and we came here to ask for good health for everyone. Salud and let the ‘covid’ go. once released, we can hug, give each other a kiss, “he told the Lusa agency.
In addition to the bathers, on Carcavelos beach, during the morning you could see families, people walking dogs, others running along the beach, many curious people taking photos, surfers, a small group playing volleyball; all this under the discreet gaze of the authorities, on land and at sea.
Rui Inocêncio, 55, finished and left the sea, told the Lusa agency that he has been doing this ritual for 15 years.
For the year that begins, with a cloudy sky in Carcavelos and a shy rainbow rising among gray clouds, this bather was succinct: “Let the pandemic pass, so that we are all well.”
