Driving Through My Roots Before I Knew They Were Mine

 

I grew up knowing I was Portuguese. “100% Madeiran.”

That was my identity, my story, my origin. Mainland Portugal was something I only knew from airport layovers, Lisbon, Porto, a quick café, a long connection, and then straight to the island. I never imagined I had any connection to the north. Why would I? My hometown roots were Madeira.

Then Euro 2004 was announced.

And suddenly, my best friend Jamie and I decided it was time to discover Iberia for ourselves.

We met in high school in Brantford. Jamie was quiet, kind, and easy to talk to. I was… very Portuguese. One day he told me he was half‑Spanish, his father, who he didn’t grow up with, had strong roots in Madrid. He said it softly, almost apologetically, and then added something that stuck with me:

“I’m sad I never got to learn Spanish.”

Since I considered myself “basically fluent” in Spanish, which was generous. I volunteered to teach him. For a year and a half we were inseparable. Every bus ride, every walk home, every lunch break turned into a Spanish lesson taught by a Madeiran kid who had never actually been to Spain.

When I didn’t know the Spanish word, I’d just toss in the Portuguese one. Jamie trusted me completely, which made it even funnier when he tried speaking to real Spanish speakers and confused them beyond belief.

But he learned fast. Really fast. And maybe that’s why the idea of an Iberian road trip felt right. He was searching for a connection he never had. I was searching for a Portugal I had never seen.

So we booked a trip.

Fly into Lisbon. Explore a few days. Meet some of my family. Drive across Iberia with a stop in Madrid so he could meet his father’s side. Then return the car in Portugal and watch a Euro match at Estádio da Luz.

Simple. Ambitious. Perfect.

What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have known — was that this trip would take me through the very landscapes my ancestors once called home.

We left Lisbon and headed south first, Setúbal, Évora, Silves, Portimão, tracing the warm, sun‑baked roads of the Alentejo and hiting the beach in Algarve before crossing into Spain.

Huelva, Córdoba, Toledo, Madrid, Cuenca, Segovia , each city unfolding like a chapter in a book we didn’t know we were writing. Then back into Portugal, northward toward Braga, with stops in pueblos and aldeias along the way.

The roads began to twist, the hills rose around us, and the houses appeared one by one like scattered stones. Modern highways laid over ancient cart paths, weaving from village to village. I remember loving every minute of it, the granite, the terraces, the sudden views that opened like windows into another century.

At the time, I thought it was just beautiful. Just Portugal. Just scenery.

I had no idea it was my scenery.

We crossed into the region around Chaves, and I remember thinking how different it felt from Madeira, the air, the landscape, the architecture. I didn’t know that generations of my family had lived not far from where we were driving. I didn’t know that the hills I admired were once familiar to people whose names I hadn’t even discovered yet.

Back then, I thought I was 100% Madeiran. Back then, I thought I was just passing through.

We got stuck behind a Dutch caravan, a massive silver Airstream covered in orange flags, crawling up the mountain roads like it was leading a parade. We laughed, we cursed, we tried not to miss the Euro kickoff. It was chaos and joy and youth all mixed together.

By the time we reached Braga, the city was buzzing. The brand‑new stadium carved into the rock. The churches glowing in the late afternoon sun. The streets alive with football fever.

And there, waiting for me, was a Madeiran cousin I hadn’t seen since 1988, since I was eight years old. Rodrigo. We picked up the thread like no time had passed.

At the time, I thought that was the meaningful part of the trip, the reunion, the excitement, the energy of Portugal during the Euro.

But years later, after researching my grandfather and discovering the truth about my roots, I realized something else:

I had been driving through my own history without knowing it.

Those hills weren’t random. Those villages weren’t strangers. Those roads weren’t just roads.

They were the landscapes of my ancestors, people I didn’t yet know existed, whose stories I hadn’t uncovered, whose names I hadn’t learned. I was moving through the geography of my own bloodline, completely unaware.

Sometimes life gives you the journey first and the meaning years later.

That road trip, that drive through the north,wasn’t just an adventure. It was my past waving at me from the roadside, waiting for me to catch up.