Les Tugas
Les Tugas is a Portuguese watch sold by the Instituto Português de Relojoaria (IPR), the Portuguese watchmaking institute and school, which presents it as the first Portuguese wristwatch, designed and developed in Portugal. That is the institute's own claim and rests on criteria it sets itself: about 70% of production costs spent in Portugal, with design, research, development, final inspection and regulation all carried out there. The name is used with humour: "tugas" is a nickname for the Portuguese, and the tagline, "Somos todos nós" ("we are all of us"), plays on the idea that many Swiss watches are largely made by Portuguese hands.
The first model, the Les Tugas 01, costs €1,600, or a €800 deposit with the balance due before delivery. It has a 39 mm, 10.5 mm-thick case in 316L stainless steel, machined from solid on a CNC machine, with brushed sides and a polished, bevelled front, a sapphire crystal with an internal anti-reflective coating, a transparent sapphire screw-down caseback and a signed crown that does not screw down. The matte black dial has a white sector scale applied by pad printing, the hands are polished steel with a silver galvanic finish, and the watch comes on a slate-grey natural suede strap with a steel buckle engraved with the logo. It is water resistant to 5 ATM, carries a three-year warranty and is made in limited production with a serial number engraved on the caseback.
The movement is the Swiss ETA 2824-2 automatic, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with 25 jewels and about 38 hours of power reserve, with hours, minutes and seconds only. The institute credits different parts of Portugal with different components: the case from Lisbon, the dial from Sintra, the crystals from Salvaterra de Magos, the strap from Vila do Conde, the transport box from Leiria and finishing in Porto, with final assembly and regulation in Portugal. The logo, four vertical strokes crossed by a diagonal fifth, stands for the stages of watchmaking (design, manufacture, finishing and assembly) and, in the diagonal, for the coherence, rigour and technical mastery of contemporary Portuguese watchmaking.
The Serpe, at €5,000 including VAT, is the Métiers d'Art version of the Les Tugas, made with the artisan Bernardo D'Orey. Its dial is made by hand with his Dragon Scales technique, based on Portuguese straw marquetry, in which each scale is composed individually and the buyer chooses the colours from an extensive palette at D'Orey's atelier, so no two dials are alike and the watch is made to order. The ETA 2824 movement is finished in Switzerland by Vitor Calçada, with perlage on the plate and anglage and sandblasting on the bridges, and a custom oscillating weight with a rayed finish and a Dragon Scales engraving bearing the name SERPE, visible through the transparent caseback.
The institute also describes a network of watchmaking services that could serve future Portuguese brands, and says it shares its know-how through its school. The sources used for this listing do not name a founder, a founding date or a city for the brand, and the Les Tugas 01 product page could not be loaded, so the details for that model come from the Les Tugas page on the institute's site, which the address lestugas.pt redirects to. The Serpe's case, dimensions and strap are not described. This listing draws only on the institute's own pages.