So I decided to dig into this word, desenrascar, found in the book I’m reading. Desenrascar means untangle, and desenroscar is more like uncoil, whereas and you can get the meanings of rasca and rosca respectively from the verbs. Desenrascar also seems to mean to sort something out in general resolve a problem.
Trying to understand this, I came across a site in which someone said this was the best English explanation of “o nosso povo (…) ao mesmo tempo desenrascado e forreta”
I tend to steer clear of the portuguese kids, partly because they don’t sing in portuguese but mostly because Americans can sometimes be a bit cringe when they’re too attached to the old country. Witness how chicagoans die their river green for St Patrick’s day, for example.
But anyway, there you go. They are big on doing stuff for themselves and desenrascar seems to be a key word there.
Incidentally, the only other time I’ve seen that word Berbicacho is in the title of a Deolinda song, which I mentioned a couple of years ago in a post about Viriatus.
Luso 