Santa Cruz customs house

The importance and commercial traffic of the settlement of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’) earned it a customs house long before it was raised to the rank of town (vila). Thus we find that the royal letter (carta régia) of 15 March 1477 – that is, 38 years before the municipality was created – ordered a revenue house to be established there for collecting taxes and royal dues. We do not know whether it began to operate immediately; the oldest document concerning it that we know of dates from 1549.

From the many references to it that we have found, from the number and standing of its posts, and also from the registers of various documents entered in the books of the former Crown Revenue Office (Provedoria) of Funchal, we can see that the customs house of Santa Cruz was more important and busier than that of Machico, even though the latter stood at the seat of the captaincy.

This revenue house had the posts of judge, almoxarife (royal revenue officer and storekeeper), clerk (escrivão), factor (feitor), doorkeeper, harbour constable (alcaide do mar) and four guards. Not all these posts were created when it was established, but at long intervals, as the needs of the service perhaps required. The oldest post must have been that of almoxarife, but the only record we know of is the warrant of the Council of the Treasury (Conselho da Fazenda) of 12 March 1614, which appointed António Pimentel to that post, with the privilege that ‘he be given the houses of the Customs House to live in and to store His Majesty’s royal fifth on sugar (quintos do açúcar)’.

The post of judge, which was the highest in rank, was created by royal decree (alvará régio) of 18 August 1563, and Tomé Alves was appointed to it. The royal decree of 11 August 1644 ordered that the ‘customs judge of Santa Cruz should serve as superintendent of the Funchal customs house whenever that superintendent was unable to act, and not the clerks of the Main Board’.

The post of clerk already existed in 1551 and that of doorkeeper in 1550, but the dates of their creation are unknown. The office of factor was established by the royal letter of 10 May 1549, and Domingos Fernandes was the first to be appointed to it. The post of harbour constable, which already existed in 1600, was abolished in 1744.

When the customs house was established, four posts of guard were created. In 1682, by order of the Council of Finance (Conselho de Fazenda), these guards were transferred to serve in the Funchal customs house.

We do not know when the customs house of Santa Cruz was abolished. We know only of a petition made in 1768 by António João Nunes Pereira, requesting ownership of the office of factor of this customs house, by then already abolished, so that he might exercise the post in the Funchal customs house. The abolition cannot have taken place very long before 1768, and António João Nunes Pereira was perhaps a descendant and heir of the last holder of that office. In 1502 several residents of Funchal had requested the abolition of the customs houses of Santa Cruz and Machico, but their petition was rejected.

The building of the Santa Cruz customs house must have been demolished towards the end of the second quarter of the 19th century. Some people still alive today remember it. It stood in the centre of the town, at the beginning of the street that now bears the name of Dr Pinga and leads to the public promenade. It had a certain air of grandeur and was built in the Manueline style of the period, with pointed-arch windows and doors, in every respect similar to those of the building of the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal). It was a pity that it was not preserved with the respect owed to the venerable relics of the past. It was a monument bearing witness to the prosperity of the old town of Santa Cruz, which lost its former importance as Funchal grew and prospered.