Ponta do Sol (town and municipality)

In the early days of the colonisation of Madeira, Ponta do Sol (‘point of the sun’) was one of the most active centres of agriculture, above all in the growing of sugar cane and the associated products of the sugar industry. Many grantees of land (sesmeiros) from the mainland settled here, a great number of Moorish and Black slaves worked the land, and many mills were built for making sugar. All of this contributed to the growth and prosperity of this village (lugar, settlement rank below a town). Frutuoso states that João Esmeraldo (see that entry) had some eighty slaves on his property at the Lombada (‘long ridge’) and that he came to produce twenty thousand arrobas of sugar a year, which seems to us an exaggeration.

As it grew in importance and population, and as it was the centre of other small settlements that gradually arose around it, it was natural that it should become a town (vila) and municipality with its own charter (foral), granting it the privileges and exemptions that the people of the time guarded so jealously. The government in Lisbon took this view, and in the relevant royal letter (carta régia) the monarch says: ‘we, of our own motion, without their requesting it, nor others in their names, see fit and do make the said lugar of Ponta do Sol a town...’ This document is dated 2 December 1501 and is recorded in volume 1 of the Registo Geral da Camara do Funchal, at fol. 67. According to the annotator of the Saudades, the copy held in the secretariat of the Ponta do Sol Municipal Council, which was taken from the register of the Funchal Council, contains various inaccuracies. The corresponding charter, which is shared with the municipalities of Funchal and Calheta (‘small cove’), is dated 6 August 1515 and is transcribed on p. 494 ff. of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra).

The new municipality was carved out of that of Funchal, and its area and jurisdiction extended from the Ribeira da Ponta do Sol to Ponta do Tristão. The Lombada dos Esmeraldos (‘the Esmeraldos’ ridge’) belonged to the municipality of Funchal, although in ecclesiastical terms it depended on the parish church of Our Lady of Light (Nossa Senhora da Luz). Only in 1835, by a royal decree (alvará) of the prefect (prefeito) dated 24 January and registered in the Archive of the Funchal Council, was it incorporated into the municipality (concelho) of Ponta do Sol.

With the creation of the municipality of Calheta, in a year that cannot be determined precisely but was no later than 1502, the municipality of Ponta do Sol was reduced to half of the parish (freguesia) of the same name, to Canhas and Madalena (‘Magdalene’), which at that time were not yet independent parishes, and to the locality of Pinheiro (‘pine tree’), which now forms part of the parish of Arco da Calheta (‘arc of Calheta’).

The area of this municipality remained unchanged until 1835, when, with the creation and reorganisation of the municipalities, the municipality of Ponta do Sol was constituted with the parishes of Ponta do Sol, Madalena do Mar, Canhas, Tabua, Ribeira Brava and Serra de Água.

When the municipality of Ribeira Brava (‘wild river’) was created in 1914, the parishes of Tabua (‘bulrush’) and Serra de Água were detached from the municipality of Ponta do Sol and incorporated into the new municipality.

Tradition has it that when the village (lugar, settlement rank below a town) of Ponta do Sol was raised to the rank of town, King Manuel I presented it with a weights standard and a seal bearing the arms of the Municipality. The arms consisted of a face, as the sun is customarily depicted, surrounded by the following legend: Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem (Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed [his people]). The weights standard is of bronze and weighs 64 arráteis; engraved around it are the words: Me madou fazere Dom Emânuel rei de Portugal Ano de 1499 (Dom Manuel, King of Portugal, had me made in the year 1499). An official document addressed to the central government in 1853 states that this standard is, of its kind, an archaeological piece of value.

The town of Ponta do Sol is the seat of the judicial district (comarca) of the same name, which covers the municipalities of Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol and Calheta. This judicial district, like those of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’) and São Vicente (‘St Vincent’), was created by the decree of 12 November 1875. It was installed on 28 April 1876, its first judge and first public prosecutor being Dr Martinho da Rocha Guimarães Camões and Dr António Augusto Ribeiro de Campos, who took up their posts on the day of, and at the ceremony marking, the installation of the judicial district.