Espínola

This is a noble and very old surname here in Madeira. It descends from António and Leonardo Espínola, close relatives, who came to this island in the first quarter of the 16th century. They were natives of Genoa and sprang from an old and noble family of that city.

There are two branches. The first is the Espínolas de Adorno or Aderno, whose coat of arms, granted in 1513, consists of ‘a field of gold and a fess chequy of silver and red, and on it a red branch of thorns, and for difference a blue marlota, a silver helm open and for crest the same branch, mantling of gold and red’. The other branch, known by the name of Rosa or de la Rosa, has a coat of arms conferred on 27 February 1535, whose description in no way differs from the former.

António Espínola held much land in sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation). On 30 April 1524 he donated a plot at the edge of the city, on which the chapel of São Tiago (St James the Greater) was built, on condition that members of his family be buried there and that the chaplain ask for an Our Father and a Hail Mary for his soul, according to the annotator of the ‘Island History’ (Historia Insulana).