Water

The use of water, as the primary element of agriculture, was from the outset one of the greatest concerns and labours of the first settlers of Madeiran soil. These concerns have been handed down without interruption from generation to generation, taking the most varied forms and creating a vast web of economic and social interests that would merit a thorough and extensive study, which unfortunately has yet to be made.

The gigantic task of building the levadas (irrigation channels), which lasted for centuries; the struggles to acquire and hold their flows of water; the popular uprisings that broke out several times for this reason; the formation of associations of heréus (co-owners of the water rights of a levada) to exploit and distribute the water; the frequent lawsuits; the many laws enacted to regulate these matters; the customs and practices that took root, etc., would provide ample material for such a broad and interesting study.

The first settlers readily saw that Madeira’s particular conditions – the make-up of its soils, the ruggedness of its slopes and hillsides, the shelter the coast enjoyed under the protection of the high mountains, etc. – marked out the land along the ocean as the most suitable for profitable crops, which soon became considerable sources of wealth and prosperity. Without delay, abundant springs began to be channelled through long aqueducts, which grew in number and improved in construction from year to year as the sugar-making and wine industries also developed more widely and more efficiently.

So began the greatest undertaking ever carried out for the benefit of Madeiran agriculture, and one of the most important factors in the public wealth of the archipelago: the building of the Levadas (‘irrigation channels’).

Several legislative measures issued by the central government were soon adopted, laying down certain principles of law and establishing essential rules that came to regulate the use of water intended for irrigating the land. The oldest known are the royal letters (carta régia) of John II of 7 March and 7 May 1493, which contain very important provisions on this question and are transcribed on p. 673 ff. of the annotations to ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra), 1873.

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Before these salutary provisions,’ Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo informs us, ‘there were already levadas (irrigation channels) and allocations of irrigation water. On fol. 270 of vol. 1 of the Archivo da Câmara do Funchal there is registered a letter from the Infante Ferdinand, issued in 1461, ordering that there should be two sworn men charged with sharing out the water, and on fol. 222 of the same volume one reads a chapter of another letter, of 1485, which ordered the water to be released on Sundays to all the heirs...

These wise measures by the government of mainland Portugal were followed by others no less wise, most notably the royal letter of Manuel I of 9 February 1505 (Saud, 688), which confirmed, extended and regulated anew the provisions of the earlier decrees. To it the illustrious annotator of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso adds this judicious comment: this legislation produced excellent results, especially in the irrigation of the land. In that period the principal general or common levadas of the island of Madeira were built – arteries through which, from then until now, although the institution has since been distorted, there flows in abundance the blood of its agricultural life, the precious filter of its prosperity and constant rejuvenation’.

Over time, further legislative provisions came to promote and improve the management of irrigation water. Among them we should cite the royal letters of 6 March 1563 and 18 August of the same year, 20 July 1579, 26 April 1587, 13 September 1644, 7 April 1655, 10 October 1663 and 5 March 1770.

During the first four centuries after the beginning of the colonisation of Madeira, the laborious work of harnessing the water, carrying it through long aqueducts and distributing it over the cultivated land was mainly in the hands of private initiative. It was, however, greatly assisted by the State, which enacted the most effective legislative measures to protect these important services. It was a little over a century ago that the central government, responding to the urgent and forceful requests of the farmers and rural landowners of this island, undertook to begin building some levadas which, had they been left to the private initiative of the farmers, could perhaps never have been built.

The area of arable land was growing considerably, and the efforts of the cultivators could no longer meet the needs that arose, since almost all of them lacked the means to meet the enormous cost of cutting new levadas. In this way the State carried out a great work of protection for Madeiran agriculture: it fostered public wealth, raised the value of the cultivated land and greatly increased its taxable income for the benefit of the State itself, as a return on the capital invested. This most remarkable work is one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all, that the government of the mainland has carried out on this island over the long span of five centuries.