Saramago Route

A young peasant woman with the ability to read people’s minds and perceive their desires.

The narrator states that the heroine of “Baltasar and Blimunda” came by her extraordinary powers while in her mother’s belly, where she waited with her eyes wide open. She meets Baltasar at an auto-de-fé and falls head-over-heels in love.

Left to fend for himself by the army during the War of the Spanish Succession after he lost his left hand, he meets Blimunda when he arrives in Lisbon and immediately falls in love.

A simple, loyal and loving man, he accepts what life brings with the resignation of the humble. He dies at the stake at an auto-de-fé.

Presented as a caricature figure, especially when describing his least ingratiating qualities, he represents absolute power, for which the ends justify the means.

It is under his orders that the megalomaniacal project to build the Monastery of Mafra is started, under the pretext of a vow made to the clergy to guarantee the succession to the throne.

A woman of her age, her marriage to João V is one of convenience and the only means of self-affirmation in their loveless union is through motherhood. She is therefore obsessed with her fertility and when she becomes pregnant, after long and anxious novenas, she believes God is responsible.

She has sinful thoughts about her brother-in-law which make her feel guilty and cause her to redouble her prayers.

The daughter of New Christians, she is persecuted and convicted by the Inquisition. Accused of blasphemy and heresy, she appears before an auto-de-fé in Rossio where she is whipped and later deported to Angola.

She bids her daughter Blimunda farewell telepathically so as not to shame her in public. It is through her that Blimunda meets Baltasar.