A few days ago, on one of the rare days that snow in Portugal, on a glorious late afternoon, with the sun almost setting and wanting to peek out from behind the clouds, I came across this landscape that I think represents the essence of the province of Trás-os-Montes, where I was located (in the north, in the Montalegre region).

As the Portuguese historian Jaime Cortesão (1884-1960) wrote in his essay about the country he loved so much – "Portugal. A terra e o homem" (Portugal. The land and the men.), in one of the chapters dedicated to Trás-os-Montes: "You move from Minho to Trás-os-Montes: the face of the land and the soul of man changes. Everything becomes sombre and serious. A severe melancholy floats over things and beings. What we now see in front of us is a serious and austere plateau landscape. The village also became rare. Men and sierras have a distant air. For those who haven't stopped yet. From those who are about to leave, always hungry for more space".

It was this gravitas, this monumentality before which man feels small, this powerful force of nature, for now apparently dormant because it is Winter, that I felt at that moment that I tried to capture with my full-frame Canon and a wide-angle lens.