100 YEARS OF WALTER PIAZZA
The island of Santa Catarina was the finest way God found to make southern Brazil a little less distant from the Azores—and much more like its ancestral archipelago.
Nearly 10,000 kilometres away and almost 300 years later, there we still are, as we have always been: with Azorean blood spoken in a Brazilian accent.
It all began in 1748, when thousands of Azoreans overcame the vastness of the sea to settle the immense southern reaches of the Brazilian colony, at the behest of the Portuguese Crown.
Along the 500 kilometres of coastline of the State of Santa Catarina, 6,000 Azoreans, particularly from the islands of Terceira, Pico, São Jorge, Faial, and Graciosa, founded the first settlements and forever shaped agriculture, artisanal fishing and whaling, architecture, gastronomy and handicrafts, folklore, the farra do boi, and the Feast of the Holy Spirit.
Two centuries later, in 1948, the Historical and Geographical Institute of Santa Catarina organized the bicentennial congress commemorating the settlement, an event that restored recognition to and reaffirmed the value of the Azorean cultural heritage in southern Brazil.
Through the successive and exhaustive historical investigations that thereafter engaged the academic community, being of Azorean descent became a source of pride in the capital city of Florianópolis, throughout the island, and across the State of Santa Catarina.
One name stands above all others in its association with that bicentennial congress and as the foremost scholar of Santa Catarina’s Azorean-influenced history: Walter Piazza.
He was born in Nova Trento on November 6, 1925, and moved to Florianópolis at the age of twenty-two.
Holding a doctorate in Social Sciences, he was a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, where he pioneered the teaching of the state’s history, and was the author of some 300 works, including books and scholarly articles published in Brazil and abroad.
He was a distinguished member of the Santa Catarina Academy of Letters and of the Historical and Geographical Institutes of the states of Santa Catarina, Espírito Santo, Bahia, and São Paulo, as well as a corresponding member of the Historical Institute of Terceira Island.
His interest in Azorean research brought him to Portugal for six months, where he undertook decisive archival research at the Overseas Historical Archive, the Torre do Tombo National Archive, and in the archives of the Azores themselves.
His admiration for the Azorean people led him to describe us as “fighters,” forged by the adversity inherent in island life, “always setting forth upon great endeavors.”
Walter Piazza died on February 9, 2016, in Florianópolis, sister city of both Angra do Heroísmo and Ponta Delgada.
He had lived for ninety years and devoted seven decades to influential research into the Azorean history of Santa Catarina.
In mourning his passing—a loss that distance cannot diminish—he therefore deserved a tribute of recognition from the Autonomous Region of the Azores through its most representative institution.
This was the text I proposed, while serving as a member of the Azorean Parliament, for the Vote of Condolence unanimously approved by the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores during its plenary session of February 17, 2016.
Nine years after his death, we joined in celebrating his life on the occasion of the symposium “Professor Walter Fernando Piazza: A Builder of Pasts for the Present,” held in Florianópolis on November 6, 2025, to commemorate the centenary of his birth.
In doing so, we expressed the recognition rightfully owed to the cherished memory of the public servant, journalist, folklorist, university professor, archaeologist, geographer, and historian—in the end, to the remarkable man Walter Fernando Piazza was, and forever will remain.
The history of Santa Catarina owes an immense debt to his life and work, as does, most especially, the historic relationship between Azoreans and the people of Santa Catarina—two peoples brought together by the Atlantic and made kindred through culture.
As testimony to that very bond, he made his first journey to the Azores forty years ago, following the agreement signed in 1984 between the University of the Azores, represented by its rector, António Machado Pires, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina, represented by its rector, Ernani Bayer.
That journey gave rise to his article entitled “Os Arquivos dos Açores e a História Catarinense” [“The Archives of the Azores and the History of Santa Catarina”], published in 1986 in Ágora, the journal of the Association of Friends of the Public Archive of the State of Santa Catarina.
Following his visit—and perhaps, in some measure, because of it—many scholars of our shared history have made, and continue to make, frequent transatlantic journeys to the Azorean cradle of Santa Catarina’s settlement. Among them are the president of the Santa Catarina Academy of Letters, Lélia Pereira Nunes; the president of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Santa Catarina, Luiz Nilton Correa; and the president of the Casa dos Açores of Santa Catarina, Sérgio Luiz Ferreira.
In doing so, they continue to honor the enduring memory of Walter Piazza.
José Andrade is the Regional Director for the Communities
Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores
Excerpt from the video address presented at the symposium commemorating the centenary of the birth of Walter Fernando Piazza, held on November 6, 2025, in Florianópolis.