The Legend of the Portuguese Rooster

Galo de Barcelos is the national symbol of Portugal.

It symbolizes honesty, integrity, trust and honor.

The Legend of the Portuguese Rooster

The inhabitants of a village were quite alarmed with a crime, and this all the more because they could not discover the criminal. One day appeared an outsider who became suspect at once.

The authorities resolved to seize him and in spite of all his oaths of innocence nobody believed him. Nobody thought it credible that the man was on his way to worship a well-known saint in a nearby town, St. Tiago. Finally he was condemned to death by hanging. As a last request before his execution, he asked to be 
brought once more into the presence of the judge who had condemned him. The request was granted and they lead him to the residence of the magistrate, who was just banqueting with some friends. The convicted man declared again 
his innocence and in the presence of the guests, he pointed to a roasted rooster on the table exclaiming: "My innocence is as certain as the roasted rooster will cry, if I should be hung."

Everybody laughed at him, but nobody dared to touch the rooster. However what seemed impossible, became reality. When the man was to be hung, in that very moment the roasted rooster stood up on the table and began crying. Nobody doubted any more the innocence of the condemned man. They hurried to the gibbet and saw the poor man with the rope around his neck. But a free knot had avoided his suffocation. Immediately set free the man went away in peace.

Some years later, he returned again to Barcelos and built a monument in praise of St. Tiago and the Holy Virgin.