Horta, City of Migrations

The city of Horta, on the island of Faial, was a point of passage throughout the nineteenth century, marked by the presence of German, British, and American communities involved in the installation of submarine telegraph cable stations; by the establishment of an Allied naval base during the two World Wars; and by the era of the Pan American clippers and the presence of Dutch tugboats.

Yet it was also a point of passage in the twentieth century, with the opening of Peter Café Sport in 1918, a venue especially dedicated to international yachtsmen and later described by Newsweek magazine of New York as “one of the best bars in the world”; and with the construction of the Azores’ first marina in 1986, which shelters thousands of yachts crossing the North Atlantic, serving as the modern extension of a strategic harbor whose importance spans centuries.

Horta was also a point of departure in the seventeenth century, when the eruption of the Cabeço do Fogo volcano on April 24, 1672, devastated the small parish of Praia do Norte and drove hundreds of Faial residents to Maranhão and Grão-Pará in northeastern Brazil.

Horta remained a point of departure in the eighteenth century, when Faialenses, together with other Azoreans, helped settle southern Brazil—first in Santa Catarina and later in Rio Grande do Sul.

Here, it was a native son of Faial, João Garcia Dutra, who initiated the settlement of the Village of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos, today the city of Gravataí, in 1772, after receiving a land grant on territory acquired by the Portuguese Crown. Two hundred and fifty years later, this Brazilian city founded by a Faialense is home to 285,000 inhabitants—far more than the combined population of all nine islands of the Azores.

But Horta was also a point of departure in the twentieth century, when the eruption of the Capelinhos Volcano on September 27, 1957, unleashed thirteen months of social upheaval and uncertainty along the island’s northern coast and throughout Faial as a whole.

Since 1790, Horta had already been the first locality in Europe to host an American consular representation. Yet this was the first—and remains the only—occasion in the long history of bilateral relations between Portugal and the United States when the U.S. Congress enacted exceptional legislation specifically designed to receive Azorean immigrants.

Thousands of displaced Faial families thus found refuge and comfort on the far side of the Atlantic, opening the way for the mass emigration of Azoreans from every island. Between 1959 and 1980, approximately 100,000 Azoreans entered the United States.

Azorean emigration to North America had begun at the end of the eighteenth century, when men from Faial and Pico joined American whaling ships that regularly called at Horta’s harbor. Yet the Capelinhos Volcano changed everything.

According to the 2021 census, some 1.8 million Portuguese now reside in North America, the majority originating from the Azores or descended from Azorean emigrants. Thousands trace their roots to Faial. This reality is clearly reflected in the vibrant associational life of the Azorean diaspora.

Consider the Faial Foundation, established in 1969 in East Providence, Rhode Island, which has already awarded more than four hundred thousand dollars in scholarships to students of Faial heritage on both sides of the Atlantic.

Consider the Faialense Sport Club, founded in 1972 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, through the initiative of young Faial-born footballers who had previously been associated with Angústias Atlético Clube and Fayal Sport Clube.

Consider the Clube Amor da Pátria Community Centre, founded in 1976 in Toronto, Ontario, born from the committee charged with representing the Horta district during local Portugal Day celebrations and which eventually gathered more than three hundred members, most of them originating from Faial and Pico.

This enduring connection is equally visible in the movement of municipal twinnings. Horta is a sister city of Fremont, California; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Porto Alegre and Gravataí in Rio Grande do Sul, thereby affirming its historic transatlantic vocation.

Horta was also a harbor of arrival, beginning in the fifteenth century, with the coming of Flemish settlers who brought surnames now considered quintessentially Faialense—Brum, Bulcão, Decq, Dutra, Goulart, Rosa, Silveira, and Terra. Later came the influential Dabney family, whose decision to settle on the island would leave a profound mark on its economic, social, and cultural life.

And Horta continues to be a harbor of arrival in the twenty-first century, with a steadily growing number of foreign residents choosing to make the island their permanent home. Foreign nationals now account for 5.8 percent of Faial’s resident population, making Horta the municipality with the second-highest proportion of foreign residents in the Azores, surpassed only by Lajes das Flores at 8.6 percent. In proportional terms, Faial has become the most multicultural island in the Azorean archipelago.

Horta has thus been, across the centuries, a harbor, a threshold, a crossing place—a garden of migrations where arrivals and departures have continuously shaped the island’s identity. Its history is written not only in those who stayed, but also in those who left, those who arrived, and those who returned. Few places in the Atlantic embody so completely the human experience of movement, belonging, and reinvention.

José Andrade is the current Regional Director for Communities, Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores
Text based on a lecture delivered during the commemorative session of Matriz Parish Day, held on March 8, 2023, at the Faialense Theatre.