The region of Barroso - the ‘cold lands’ - has maintained a strong tradition of autonomy over the centuries. Remote and of difficult access, these mountains have always been places of refuge. Perhaps this is why traditions of communalism and collective life have remained so alive, such as communal grazing practices, or ‘vezeiras’, the sharing of threshing floors, the maintenance of small water canals, or ‘levadas’, the community mills and ovens and, above all, the management of ‘baldios’ or common lands, that still cover most of the territory and on which communities have always depended for their survival.