Across the centuries, human mobility across vast oceans was never possible without pauses along the way. Maritime navigation, long before the age of modern engines and satellite navigation, depended on the existence of safe harbors—places where ships could replenish water, provisions, and strength before continuing into the unknown. These stopovers became carefully marked on nautical charts and were known among sailors as essential waypoints in the geography of the seas.

From an early moment in maritime history, the Azores Archipelago assumed that role of strategic refuge in the vast Atlantic.

Time has erased many of the footprints left by ancient peoples who may have passed through the islands, yet modern research suggests that navigators such as the Phoenicians—often considered among the greatest seafarers of antiquity—likely reached these shores. Masters of early shipbuilding, credited with innovations such as the keel and caulking, and famed for spreading the alphabet and a vast trade network across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the Phoenicians may have stayed for periods on some of the islands. But distance, the unpredictability of Atlantic winds, and the limits of ancient navigation probably prevented sustained settlement. Whether they left individuals behind or merely temporary camps, the passage of centuries allowed the ocean to reclaim their traces. These events would have occurred more than three millennia ago, between the thirteenth and twelfth centuries before Christ.

For many centuries afterward, the islands remained isolated and silent. The great dramas of history—wars, empires, conquests, and civilizational transformations—unfolded on continental stages, leaving little attention for distant and sparsely inhabited islands whose resources seemed modest or unknown. Over generations, collective memory faded. The fleeting presence of Phoenicians or other adventurous navigators, perhaps even Vikings in later centuries, dissolved into legend and speculation.

Then, galloping forward through time, we arrive in the fifteenth century and encounter one of the defining figures of the Portuguese Age of Discovery: Prince Henry of Avis, the fifth son of King João I and the English princess Philippa of Lancaster. To him historians credit what the scholar José Hermano Saraiva called the “intentional discoveries”—voyages not driven by chance but by method, science, and strategic planning.

Prince Henry quickly understood the immense geographic importance of the Azores. Recognizing their value, he requested the islands from his brother, King Duarte, who granted them to him. Henry thus became the donatário—the lord and administrator—of the archipelago.

His insight was simple yet profound. Islands located in such a vast stretch of the Atlantic could extend Portugal’s reach far beyond its continental limits. They were stepping-stones across an ocean that would soon connect continents.

Prince Henry also held another powerful position: he served as administrator of the Order of Christ, the successor institution to the once immensely wealthy Knights Templar. The Templars had accumulated geographic knowledge, including possible awareness of lands across the Atlantic as early as the twelfth century. Henry’s leadership within the Order of Christ provided him access to this reservoir of knowledge.

Another source of intelligence was his brother, Prince Pedro, who traveled extensively across Europe and returned with information gathered from courts, scholars, and merchants. Through these channels—political, scientific, and exploratory—Henry assembled the knowledge needed to guide Portugal’s maritime ambitions.

Surrounded by navigators, cosmographers, and scholars, he planned voyages with unprecedented scientific rigor. Within decades Portugal had become the world’s foremost maritime power, so influential that it divided the newly discovered world with Castile in the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7, 1494.

Throughout the centuries that followed, the geostrategic importance of the Azores waxed and waned according to the conflicts of each era. Their value resurfaced repeatedly whenever global powers contested control of the Atlantic. Wars, trade routes, and military alliances all returned attention to these islands suspended between continents.

Today, that historical pattern continues.

The “new world” once imagined by Prince Henry eventually produced another global power: the United States of America. Once again the Azores occupy a strategic crossroads in Atlantic geopolitics, serving as a point of logistical and military significance for the great powers of the present age.

This reality is not merely a question of international law or diplomatic arrangements. It reflects a deeper truth: Portugal’s place in the modern world would be profoundly diminished without the Atlantic islands whose strategic importance Henry the Navigator foresaw centuries ago.

The Azores remain, unmistakably, a cornerstone of Portugal’s global relevance.

For that reason it becomes increasingly necessary—and increasingly just—for Portugal to recognize this reality fully. The islands should be treated not as a distant appendage of the nation, but as a partner of equal dignity within it.

The first president of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, João Bosco Soares da Mota Amaral, expressed this idea with memorable clarity:

“Portugal must recognize the Azores not as a territory of Portugal, but as Portugal in the Atlantic.”

Those words capture the enduring truth of the archipelago: a small group of islands whose geographic position has shaped empires, navigation, and world history—and whose significance, far from fading, continues to grow in the strategic landscape of the twenty-first century.

Jo’se Soares writes a regular column for several newspapers entitled: Fish from my backyard.