In Gondomar, traditions such as the flavor of turnip soup and the mastery of filigree were celebrated on World Tourism Day, last Sunday, the 27th. The event combined gastronomy, tradition, and artisanal heritage, showcasing skills, gestures, and memories that remain alive in the municipality.
The locality of Melres hosted the VI Chapter of the Gondomar Turnip Soup Brotherhood. The program included the enthronement of new brothers, a parade, and a fellowship lunch, where turnip soup was the main dish.
Among the new members of the Brotherhood, the President of the Municipal Assembly of Gondomar, Manuel António Pereira, and the Councilwomen of the Gondomar Municipal Chamber, Aurora Vieira and Carla Pinto Ferreira, were enthroned as Honorary Brothers.
Turnip soup, deeply linked to the agricultural tradition of São Cosme and the festivities honoring São Cosme and São Damião (celebrated on September 26th), keeps alive a recipe associated with the territory and the cultivation of the characteristic São Cosme turnip. The Brotherhood plays a crucial role in preserving and promoting this gastronomic tradition, ensuring its transmission across generations and valuing an identity-linked product.
The World Tourism Day commemorations also established a symbolic link between this gastronomic tradition and another of Gondomar's identity markers: filigree. The local company Claudiouro presented filigree earrings shaped like a turnip, a creation that unites two deeply rooted skills in the territory and shows how tradition can continue to inspire new expressions of Gondomar's identity.
