During an institutional visit to Brazil marking 50 years of Azorean Autonomy, the President of the Legislative Assembly encountered an Azorean presence that has long ceased to be merely a memory of migration. In Santa Catarina, he said, the Azores remain alive in universities, cultural institutions, political relationships—and, above all, in people.
Some migrations become chapters in history. Others become part of the identity of the place they arrived in. In Santa Catarina, centuries after Azoreans crossed the Atlantic and settled along the southern Brazilian coast, their presence remains visible not simply in genealogy or folklore, but in institutions, scholarship, language, cultural memory and the sense of belonging carried by descendants several generations removed from the islands. It was this larger geography of Azorean identity that Luís Garcia, President of the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, encountered during his visit to Florianópolis.
“There is something that becomes evident when we are in Santa Catarina: the Azores are everywhere,” Garcia observed. “They are in the institutions, in research, in culture, in the Houses of the Azores and, above all, they are in the people.” His visit forms part of the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of Azorean Autonomy. Still, in Brazil, the anniversary inevitably takes on another dimension: it becomes an opportunity to consider an Azorean world extending far beyond the archipelago’s political and geographical boundaries.
That continuity was particularly evident during visits to the Center for Azorean Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, the Historical and Geographical Institute of Santa Catarina and the Catarinense Academy of Letters. Each, from a different intellectual perspective, has contributed to studying and preserving the Azorean inheritance within the state. For Garcia, their work demonstrates that this presence can no longer be understood merely as the historical consequence of emigration. It has become part of Santa Catarina’s own cultural patrimony—an inheritance absorbed into the identity of another Atlantic society.
The political meetings carried that historical relationship toward possible future cooperation. Garcia met with Júlio Garcia, President of the Legislative Assembly of Santa Catarina, and Florianópolis Mayor Topázio Neto to discuss opportunities to deepen institutional ties. While history and culture remain fundamental, the President of the Azorean Parliament pointed toward science, the ocean, and tourism as areas in which the two regions could develop new partnerships. Shared ancestry, in this sense, becomes not the conclusion of the relationship but its foundation.
A particularly symbolic step came during the meeting with the Mayor of Florianópolis, when a memorandum was signed formalizing the municipality’s intention to participate in the commemorations of the 600th anniversary of the discovery of the Azores. The gesture links one of the archipelago’s major upcoming anniversaries with a city whose identity was profoundly shaped by Azorean settlement, allowing six centuries of island history to be commemorated on another shore of the Atlantic.
The visit ended at the House of the Azores of Santa Catarina, whose new headquarters opened only a month ago. There, President Sérgio Luiz Ferreira and members of the organization received Garcia, who described what he saw as the most human expression of everything he had seen that day. Among third- and fourth-generation descendants, he found an attachment to Azorean origins that geographical distance and the passage of generations had not extinguished. “That is perhaps one of the most beautiful demonstrations of the strength of our identity,” he said, emphasizing the role the Houses of the Azores played in keeping those connections alive.
And here, the 50th anniversary of Autonomy takes on a meaning larger than institutions. Political Autonomy gave the nine islands their contemporary framework of democratic self-government and regional representation. But Azorean identity had crossed the Atlantic long before the modern autonomous institutions existed. As Garcia put it, “Celebrating 50 years of Autonomy also means recognizing the dimension of the Azorean community beyond our nine islands. Autonomy gave us our political and institutional dimension, but our identity had long been asserting itself beyond the Atlantic.”
Garcia’s journey now continues to Rio Grande do Sul and subsequently to Uruguay, where he will participate in the 28th General Assembly of the World Council of Houses of the Azores. Yet Santa Catarina has already offered an eloquent reminder of what such journeys mean.
The Azores may be nine islands when counted by geography. But identity obeys another cartography. It survives wherever memory becomes belonging, wherever descendants continue to recognize something of themselves in islands they may never have inhabited, and wherever an old Atlantic crossing continues to create relationships centuries after the ships reached the other shore.
To celebrate 50 years of Autonomy, then, is also to celebrate those other Azores—the ones that learned, long ago, how to live beyond the sea.
Based on a press release from ALRAA, the photo is from the same source.