Coffee parties, spit pork, card games and lots of other fun that ended up with half the infected village.
They arrived from France and joined the cafe. They ate and drank, roasted a pig, passed the dishes from hand to hand. They played cards - in the good Trás-os-Montes way - late into the night. They wet their fingers with saliva to shuffle. They laughed a lot, had fun. And then they got sick. Even before the New Year - they should only return on January 3rd, 4th - they were already traveling to French lands.
The elderly were left behind contaminated, spreading the virus along the way. Most traveled by car, so as not to be caught by the authorities, the rest remain in the village. It is in Campanhó, Mondim de Basto, Vila Real district, a village that has just over 40 inhabitants and that more than half of them are positive.
"Those who came from France to spend Christmas were all sick. And then they left. They were afraid of having to quarantine," says Arlindo Neves, a resident of Campanhó, the son-in-law of an 86-year-old man who became infected.