Some traditions are preserved in official archives. Others survive because they continue to be lived, year after year, by ordinary people who understand that culture is not merely inherited—it is performed, shared, and renewed. In the fishing village of Rabo de Peixe, on the island of São Miguel, one such tradition has now found a new form of permanence through the language of photography.
The recently launched photo book Despensas – The Tradition of Rabo de Peixe, by Spanish photographer Rubén Monfort Meseguer, offers far more than a visual record of one of the Azores’ most distinctive cultural expressions. It is an act of preservation, an artistic testimony, and an invitation to discover a ritual that has long been central to the identity of one community while remaining largely unknown beyond its shores.
Presented at the Community Center of Rabo de Peixe, the 144-page publication is dedicated to the Despensas, an ancestral performative tradition celebrated each year during the two principal weekends of the Holy Spirit Festivals. While the Holy Spirit celebrations themselves are among the most recognizable expressions of Azorean culture, the Despensas possess a character all their own, bringing together hundreds of participants in a collective ritual where faith, movement, memory, and community become inseparable.
For generations, the Despensas have embodied something that cannot easily be explained through words alone. They are at once celebration and performance, devotion and social gathering, ritual and living theater. They remind participants that cultural identity is never static; it is something continually recreated through participation. Every generation inherits the tradition, but each also leaves its own imprint upon it, ensuring that what remains ancient also remains alive.
It is precisely this living quality that drew Rubén Monfort Meseguer to the project. The photographs, captured in 2018, reveal not only the choreography of the event but also its emotional landscape: faces marked by concentration and joy, gestures passed down across generations, moments where individual identity dissolves into the larger rhythm of collective belonging. His work does not seek to romanticize the tradition. Instead, it quietly documents the dignity, complexity, and humanity of a community expressing itself through ritual.
Many of these images were first exhibited in 2019 at the Casa da Beneficência de Rabo de Peixe during the Tremor Festival before traveling to other locations on São Miguel and Santa Maria. Now, gathered within a beautifully designed volume by graphic designer Sérgio Couto, they become part of a lasting archive that future generations will be able to revisit long after individual performances have faded into memory.
The publication enriches its visual narrative with two newly commissioned essays presented in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Cultural scholar António Pedro Lopes explores the intimate relationship between dance, communal participation, and collective identity, while historian António Pedro Costa provides historical context for the Despensas, situating the tradition within the broader cultural history of Rabo de Peixe and the Azores. Together, these essays transform the volume from a photography collection into an interdisciplinary exploration of heritage itself.
One of the book’s most remarkable features is its commitment to accessibility. Through an audio description developed by Helena Barros, in collaboration with the Azores branch of ACAPO (the Portuguese Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired), the publication extends its reach to readers with visual impairments, affirming that cultural heritage belongs to everyone and should be experienced by all members of the community.
Yet the photo book represents only the beginning of a much larger cultural initiative. Throughout the remainder of the year, the project will continue through a series of complementary activities, including a video and sound installation at the Carlos Machado Museum, artistic residencies, live performances, educational workshops, and school-based programs. Together, these initiatives seek not merely to document the Despensas but to stimulate dialogue about their significance, ensuring that the tradition continues to inspire new generations while remaining deeply rooted in the community from which it emerged.
This broader vision reflects an important evolution in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. Traditions survive not because they are placed behind glass or confined to museum shelves, but because they continue to be practiced, interpreted, questioned, and celebrated. Documentation, when undertaken with sensitivity and respect, becomes not an endpoint but another chapter in the life of the tradition itself.
The publication also serves as a reminder of the increasingly international character of Azorean cultural scholarship. It is fitting that a Spanish photographer should become one of the interpreters of a profoundly Azorean tradition, demonstrating that authentic cultural exchange begins not by replacing local voices but by listening carefully to them. Meseguer’s photographs reveal an outsider’s admiration while remaining firmly grounded in the lived experiences of the people who continue to sustain the Despensas each year.
Beginning July 1, the photo book will be available through several bookstores and cultural venues across the Azores, as well as in Lisbon, Porto, and online through Araucária Edições, allowing the tradition of Rabo de Peixe to travel far beyond the village that gave it life.
In an age increasingly dominated by fleeting digital images and rapidly consumed experiences, Despensas – The Tradition of Rabo de Peixe offers something enduring. It invites readers not simply to observe a cultural tradition, but to understand how communities preserve themselves through shared ritual, collective memory, and the quiet determination to continue dancing the stories that define who they are.
For the Azores, where identity has always been shaped by islands, oceans, migration, and resilience, this remarkable publication reminds us that some of the richest cultural treasures are not monuments carved in stone but living traditions carried forward by ordinary people—one celebration, one generation, and now, one beautifully crafted book at a time.
Based on a story in Correio dos Açores-Photos also from Correio dos Açores.