This story aired in the July 30, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Saudade — it’s a word in Portuguese that describes a deep sense of longing, a bittersweet nostalgia for something that’s no longer here.
For many in the Portuguese community of San Jose, it reflects the feeling of missing their home country. But celebrations like Dia de Portugal, or Portugal Day, offer opportunities to reconnect to culture through food, music, and history.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: Today marks the Portuguese Historical Society’s 28th year hosting the city’s Dia de Portugal festival. As I walk through the festival, I see large crowds and a band playing. A booth with two guys hosting a raffle catch my eye. They introduce themselves as Brian Flores and Taylor Amarante, two friends who are promoting their event, Battle of the Bifanas.
TAYLOR AMARANTE: A bifana is a very traditional Portuguese pork sandwich that everybody loves to eat and equally loves to make.
REPORTER: Taylor says that he and Brian are hosting a whole food festival around that one sandwich.
TAYLOR AMARANTE: Portugal to the non-Portuguese community, they're known, right now, specifically and primarily, for their culinary arts, right? Great wine, great food. So, what we wanna do is bring people together, feed 'em, you know. And another thing Portuguese people like to do is they like to dance and have a good time.
REPORTER: This is the first time they’re hosting the event. They’ve been wanting to bring the community together for a few years now, and the planning for it just started this year. Brian tells me what these gatherings mean for him.
BRIAN FLORES: It's an honor. I mean, to come out here to celebrate our, our rich culture with our community. It's just to get people together and have some fun.
REPORTER: But it's not just about fun. It's also a chance for people from the community to learn about Portuguese history.
One of the attractions here is the Portuguese Historical Museum at History Park. They just opened a new exhibit here today.
JOE MACHADO: It's an exhibit on the Azores Islands where most of the Portuguese people in Santa Clara County come from, including my mom and dad.
REPORTER: That’s Joe Machado. He was born in San Jose and he's been working with the museum for almost 40 years. Hist parents came over here at a time when tens of thousands of Portuguese people immigrated to the U.S.
MACHADO: My dad immigrated in 1914. He was only 16 years old, came out by himself. Can you imagine? A 16-year-old person from Azores Island on a boat 2,000 miles to New York City. And from New York City to California all by himself, did not know one word of English.
REPORTER: Portuguese people immigrated to the U.S. in waves throughout the 20th Century. And people came for different reasons. Early on, many were looking for economic opportunities. And then, after a big volcanic eruption in the Azores in the 50s, it became easier for Portuguese people to get visas to the US.
For Joe, his work at the museum is a way to pay homage to all of them.
MACHADO: If you're an immigrant, you come here and you want to make a better life for your kids. I appreciate that.
REPORTER: The descendants of those Portuguese immigrants are here today. As I walk through the building, I catch snippets of people’s conversations as they find connections between the museum’s displays and their own ancestors.
But most days, Joe says people aren't taking as much of an interest as they used to.
MACHADO: You go through the museum slowly and you read things and stuff. It's in our modern generation, I think. They're not used to doing things very slowly.
REPORTER: But it's not just the museum. Little Portugal where many of the early immigration settled. But it's not just the museum. Little Portugal — where many of the early immigrants settled — is really different than it used to be.
CAMILA SILVA: Here in this street used to be, like, only Portuguese stores in the past 20 years ago.
REPORTER: Camila Silva is the manager of the Bacalhau Grill in the heart of Little Portugal. It's a market and restaurant that's been around since 1945.
SILVA: We still have more restaurants and stores and bakeries — Portuguese bakeries — because the Portuguese community here was huge.
It's not the same in nowadays. The neighborhood has fewer Portuguese business, but it's also become more of a destination. About 10 years ago, the city of San Jose put in a new central line going through the main street.
MACHADO: They put a bus. Laying right through the middle and, and the cars are going in the side. It took so long and it does dislocated so much business. A lot of Portuguese went out, went out business.
REPORTER: And now, there's even a BART station currently being built.
MACHADO: It's a tremendous amount of, uh — while they're building — dislocation. There's dust and dirt, and tractors and trucks. When you're building something, it has a very negative effect on the surrounding community. In the long, long run will be good, but during the time of construction, it's kind of dislocating.
REPORTER: Despite changes in the community throughout the years, the spirit of Little Portugal endures. At the Bacalhau Grill, many of their goods are imported from Portugal and people come from all over the Bay to find what they're looking for.
SILVA: We have customer from Santa Cruz, Sausalito, some other areas far away, like more than 50 miles. They come here because they only find some stuffs in here. The customers that used to come here like 30 years ago, they still coming here.
REPORTER: Camila says it's a unique nostalgic feeling that keeps people coming back to Bacalhau.
SILVA: In my country, we, we have this word called saudade. They say, oh, I feel saudade when I'm here, because the music is, reminds my country, the colors, the food, the, smell of the cod fishes and the stuff that we have in the shelves that don't have in here, in the other places.
Sophie is a student at Irvington High School in Fremont. She reported that story for KALW as part of the Mosaic Journalism Summer Internship. The program is made possible by the Santa Clara County/Office of Education and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.