Minho - Espigueiros

Throughout the countryside can be seen what amounts to the symbol of the region, the little grainstores that the Portuguese call espigueiros. Their walls are made of tablets of stone with slits in them that are designed, with an aperture of only 5mm, to let the wind in but keep the birds and larger insects out. The espigueiros have stone supports to render them dampproof by raising them off the ground, and the flat stone discs at the top of these supports serve to stop mice getting in, since they can't negotiate the smooth undersurface. Nowadays the grain they used to hold has largely been replaced by maize cobs.