I didn’t have a chance to meet him or grow up knowing anything about him — because for most of my life, I had no idea I even had a living paternal grandfather. I believed I belonged to a completely different paternal line, a story that turned out not to be mine at all.
Looking back now, I can see how living in Toronto may have made this complicated situation easier for my mother to navigate. She was a young, single, Portuguese immigrant woman trying to survive in a new country, in a new language, in a city that demanded more than it gave. Carrying the weight of that reality, and the cultural expectations she came from, must have shaped the choices she made and the silences she kept.
It was only four years ago that everything shifted — the first time I ever heard the name “Jorge Alcino de Morais — Xabregas.”
A name that had been absent from my entire life until that moment.
And what arrived with that name wasn’t just a person — it was a sound.
A YouTube link to one of his compositions.
A recording in the classic Coimbra style, the kind of piece that students still learn today as a way of honouring those who came before them. Hearing it for the first time felt like being handed a key to a room I never knew existed.
Variações em Lá Menor - Played by Ricardo Mata
That moment didn’t answer everything, but it opened the door.
His Academic Path: From Trás‑os‑Montes to Porto to Coimbra
Before arriving in Coimbra, Jorge Alcino “Xabregas” had already followed a long educational path that took him far from his birthplace. He completed primary school in his hometown, and then, as a teenager, moved to Porto for his secondary studies at the Colégio Académico and the Liceu Rodrigues de Freitas.
What makes this part of his life especially meaningful is that he barely knew his mother in his earliest years. Circumstances had separated them, and the bond between them had to be rebuilt later, slowly, carefully. That’s why his time in Porto matters so much — it was likely the first period in his life when they truly lived together under the same roof again.
Knowing what she had endured, it brings me a quiet sense of comfort to imagine that she finally had those years with him. Years where she could get to know her son not as a distant figure, but as a young man growing into himself. Years where he could feel the presence of the mother he had been separated from. Years where they could reclaim something that had been taken from them.
I picture them in a modest room or a small apartment in Porto — she working, he studying — both trying to build a life out of the fragments they had been given. It adds a tenderness to his early story, a reminder that before Coimbra, before the music, there was a mother and a son learning each other again.
Coimbra: Where He Became “Xabregas”
When he eventually reached Coimbra, he enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences, completing his degree in Fisico‑Químicas (Physical‑Chemical Sciences) in 1934. It was a rigorous program rooted in mathematics, physics, and chemistry — a demanding academic path that shows his intellectual ambition. After graduating, he briefly enrolled in Medicine, but left the program in his second year.
But while Coimbra shaped him academically, it was the city’s cultural life that shaped him personally.
During his years along the Mondego, he mastered one of the great passions of his life: the Portuguese guitar.
Among students and musicians, he was known simply as “Xabregas.” He composed pieces such as Variações em Lá menor and Fado da Noite, works that placed him firmly within the tradition of Coimbra’s musical identity. He was also one of the early enthusiasts of university theatre, helping lay the foundations for what would become the TEUC — Teatro dos Estudantes da Universidade de Coimbra, an institution that still exists today.
A Presence in the City
One of the first solid traces of him appears in 1932, during the Queima das Fitas.
A photograph from the “Venda das Pastinhas” shows him holding a Portuguese guitar, identified as a quintanista — a fifth‑year student — already known by his nickname.
The Museu Académico da Universidade de Coimbra later confirmed that his actual guitar still exists. It’s preserved, photographed, and displayed in the Sala do Fado of the Efe‑Érre‑Á exhibition. They also hold documentation and references to him in academic articles. This is not the legacy of a man who passed quietly through Coimbra. This is the legacy of someone who left a mark.
Decades later, near the turn of the millennium, the Jornal de Coimbra wrote about him when he donated his guitar to the museum: “Xabregas carried the notoriety of the life of this city to the four corners of the planet.”
A Life Rooted in Coimbra
By 1936, he was teaching at the Liceu de Coimbra, continuing the academic path he had begun as a student. It’s clear that Coimbra wasn’t just a chapter in his life — it was the place where he grew into himself, where he found his voice, his community, and his artistic identity.
And now, nearly a century later, I find myself tracing those same contours in my own life, even though I never knew he existed until four years ago.
