Fairs

On 19 July 1839 the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) resolved to establish an annual fair and a weekly one in the city. The decision was approved by the District General Council (Junta), which left the choice of a site for the fair to the Council itself.

Despite the good intentions the Council had expressed, its decision was never carried out. Only later, on 29 and 30 June 1850, and on the initiative of the public-spirited Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Silvestre Ribeiro, could a fair be held in Funchal, ‘with the aim of promoting Commerce and strengthening relations between the different settlements of the island’.

The fair was set up in the Praça Académica (‘academic square’), and over those two days it was visited by no fewer than fifteen thousand people, who left a considerable sum of money there.

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The booths of the fair,’ we read in a dispatch sent by Councillor J. Silvestre Ribeiro to the Minister of the Kingdom, ‘were laid out in the best of order, and as the Praça is very spacious, some of its long avenues were left clear for the passage of the immense crowd. In the middle of the Praça a large stage was raised, and beside it a bandstand for the band of the 6th Caçadores (Portuguese light infantry) Battalion. Towards the afternoon of the 29th, thirteen country people from the parish of São Martinho, dressed in the costumes peculiar to this land, mounted the stage and performed exquisitely a dance particular to Madeira, known by the name of “A la moda”. That dance was followed by a masked dance, which stood out for the rich old costumes worn by the performers. The band of the 6th Caçadores Battalion, which the worthy commander of that corps obligingly lent me, entertained the spectators until late at night on both days, playing the loveliest pieces.

Other fairs were held later in the Praça Académica, after Councillor José Silvestre Ribeiro had left this island, but none of them displayed the brilliance or the extraordinary liveliness of the fair held on 29 and 30 June 1850 on the initiative of that illustrious civil governor.

At a session of the Funchal Municipal Council on 3 February 1768, orders were given to carry out a warrant (provisão) by which the Monarch, at the Council’s own request, had allowed a public fair to be held in the Terreiro da Sé (‘cathedral square’) on Tuesdays. If such a fair ever took place, however, it did not last long, nor did it produce the results that might reasonably have been expected of it.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays the sellers of botas chãs (traditional flat-soled leather boots) gather in the Largo do Comércio, or Largo do Chafariz, to ply their trade there. On Saturdays the cattle dealers flock to the Campo da Barca, or Campo de Miguel Bombarda, and the dealers in poles to the Praça dos Lavradores (‘farmers’ market’), and a great deal of business is done there. Pigs are sold on Fridays, next to the old petroleum warehouse.