| Summary: | The great leisure travel movement that occurred in the 19th century came late to Portugal,
largely due to the influence of the geo-political vicissitudes of the first half of the 19th century,
particularly the French invasions and the consequent refuge of the Portuguese court to Brazil,
as well as the subsequent liberal civil war. In this changing atmosphere, the foreign dimension
became, for Portuguese nationals, an imperative that was more desired and sung about than
experienced, so that it was only towards the end of the century that the necessary conditions
were met for some Portuguese to pack their bags and set off across borders. Hence, their
testimonies (literary and artistic) are precious records of an iconic time: the Belle Époque.
This article proposes a transversal reflection based on the legacy left by some of the
Portuguese travellers between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th
century, crossing a phenomenon that is transversal to western society in mutation in a
consideration of travel as an element of modernity. In this sense, and bringing together a set
of names of Portuguese culture who experienced the journey abroad, it is intended to
perspective a thematic of authorial worldview heir to the journey of the Portuguese Expansion
whose genealogy shaped the globe on a planetary scale and which the twenty-first century is
heir to.
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