THE PRESS IN THE AZORES AND SANTA CATARINA

The Azorean press, in the North Atlantic, was born two years before the Santa Catarina press, in southern Brazil. The first newspaper published in the Azores was Folhinha da Terceira, founded in 1829 in the city of Angra do Heroísmo. The first newspaper published in Santa Catarina was O Catharinense, founded in 1831 in what was then the city of Desterro.

Three years after the pioneer of Azorean newspapers in Terceira, the press arrived on the island of São Miguel with the publication of Crónica, Semanário dos Açores in 1832 in the city of Ponta Delgada.

It then expanded to almost the entire archipelago: in 1857, with O Incentivo, on the island of Faial; in 1866, with O Futuro, on the island of Graciosa; in 1871, with O Jorgense, on the island of São Jorge; in 1874, with O Picoense, on the island of Pico; in 1885, with O Mariense and O Florentino, respectively, on the outlying islands of Santa Maria and Flores.

It was also in Angra do Heroísmo that the first daily newspaper in the Azores, “A Trombeta Açoriana,” appeared in 1886. And it was in Ponta Delgada that the first agricultural periodical published in Portugal, “O Agricultor Micaelense,” was born in 1843.

According to a study we conducted on “The Azorean Press of the 19th Century,” more than five hundred periodicals were published in all the islands and municipalities of the Azores, except Corvo, in the first seven decades alone, up to 1899. These were newspapers, bulletins, and magazines of a political, literary, religious, and humorous nature, generally short-lived, with small print runs and a minimum number of pages.

Sixty percent of the 19th-century newspapers were published in three Azorean cities: 186 in Ponta Delgada, 144 in Angra do Heroísmo, and 90 in Horta. It is curious to note that, during the 19th century, the Azorean press and the Santa Catarina press were chronologically similar but quantitatively different.

The Azores Archipelago, with a population of 248,000 in the first general census of the Portuguese population conducted in 1864, had more than 500 newspapers published in the 19th century. The then Province of Santa Catarina, with 158,000 inhabitants in the first Brazilian census of 1872, had about 160 newspapers published in the 19th century, as indicated in the Catalog of Santa Catarina Newspapers of the Santa Catarina Culture Foundation.

Interestingly, the Azorean and Santa Catarina press also published three dozen newspapers with exactly the same title during the 19th century, namely: A Esperança, A Liberdade, A Lucta, A Luz, A Quinzena, A Regeneração, A Semana, A União, A Verdade, A Voz, A Voz do Povo, Conciliador, Evolução, O Artista, O Futuro, O Globo, O Independente, O Patriota, O Progressista, O Progresso, O Santelmo, O Typographo, Palavra, Pátria, Sul, Vanguarda, and Voz da Verdade.

Even 100 years later, at the end of the 20th century, when the Autonomous Region of the Azores, after the great wave of Azorean emigration, stabilized its population at around 250,000 inhabitants, the press on our islands is still proportionally significant.

Until the beginning of this century, we had seven daily newspapers, almost all of them over a century old, published simultaneously in three cities: the morning papers Açoriano Oriental and Correio dos Açores and the afternoon paper Diário dos Açores in Ponta Delgada; the morning newspaper “Diário Insular” and the afternoon newspaper “A União” in Angra do Heroísmo; the morning newspaper “O Telégrafo” and the afternoon newspaper “Correio da Horta” in the city of Horta.

The state of Santa Catarina—which has grown to around six million inhabitants—has four dozen daily publications, according to information from the National Association of Newspapers.

As a final point of interest, if we compare the two newspapers with the highest circulation in the Azores and Santa Catarina, we find that the “Açoriano Oriental,” published for 183 years in Ponta Delgada, prints 5,000 copies daily in an urban area of 46,000 inhabitants, and that the “Diário Catarinense”, published for 32 years in Florianópolis, has a circulation of 34,000 copies in a city with 485,000 residents.

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José Andrade is the Regional Director of Communities of the Autonomous Region of the Azores

This article is an excerpt from the communication presented at the Media Roundtable of the International Congress on 270 Years of Azorean Presence in Santa Catarina, held in Florianópolis on April 19, 2018.

Filamentos thanks the Luso-American Education Foundation for its support.