Through his evocative video installation From the Sea, to the Land, to the Despensas of Rabo de Peixe, Spanish audiovisual artist Rúben Monfort reveals one of São Miguel’s most extraordinary expressions of community, faith and cultural memory—a centuries-old tradition in which generosity becomes a ritual, the streets become places of encounter, and the spirit of a people finds its most eloquent expression in the joy of sharing.
Some traditions are not preserved in museums, written into history books, or confined to the solemnity of commemorative ceremonies. They survive in the gestures of ordinary people, in the doors that open without hesitation, in the tables where strangers are welcomed as friends, and in the music that transforms the familiar streets of a village into a living geography of human affection. They belong to that mysterious territory where memory becomes celebration and where the past, rather than retreating into nostalgia, continues to inhabit the present with astonishing vitality. In Rabo de Peixe, on São Miguel’s northern coast, such a tradition has endured across generations. Known as the despensas, it is a remarkable expression of Azorean communal life, an inheritance of generosity, conviviality and devotion that Spanish audiovisual artist Rúben Monfort has now brought into a new artistic dimension.
His video installation, Do Mar, à Terra, às Despensas de Rabo de Peixe (From the Sea, to the Land, to the Despensas of Rabo de Peixe), is part of the Ponta Delgada – Portuguese Capital of Culture 2026 (PDL26) program. Presented at the Sacred Art section of the Carlos Machado Museum, housed in the historic Igreja do Colégio, the work offers far more than a visual record of a local celebration. It invites audiences into the intimate cultural universe of a community whose identity has been shaped by the sea, by faith, by the endurance of collective memory and by an extraordinary capacity to transform hospitality into a public expression of belonging.
Writing about the installation, António Pedro Costa, himself deeply connected to Rabo de Peixe and its traditions since childhood, describes an experience of profound emotion. The images of hundreds of people gathering in the streets, smiling, singing, dancing, and sharing food awakened in him not merely the pleasure of recognition but an overwhelming sense of pride in his hometown’s cultural inheritance. What moved him most was the apparent absence of barriers between people. No one seemed to remain a stranger for long. Those who arrived were welcomed into the circle, and the celebration unfolded as an expression of a community whose greatest wealth was its willingness to share.
There is a particular beauty in this vision of communal life, especially in an age increasingly characterized by social fragmentation, hurried encounters, and the quiet erosion of neighborhood relationships. The despensas offer a different understanding of how humans coexist. They remind us that community is not simply a collection of individuals inhabiting the same geographical space. It is something continually created through participation, mutual recognition, and acts of generosity. A street becomes a place of belonging because people choose to gather there. A table acquires significance because its food is offered to others. Music becomes more than entertainment because it invites bodies and voices into a common rhythm.
Monfort’s achievement lies in recognizing the extraordinary cultural significance of gestures that, to those who have experienced them throughout their lives, may appear almost ordinary. An outsider’s gaze can sometimes reveal what familiarity has rendered invisible. Costa acknowledges this paradox with affectionate astonishment: it took a young Spanish artist, arriving on São Miguel with the curiosity and sensitivity of someone encountering the tradition anew, to recognize the artistic possibilities of one of Rabo de Peixe’s most distinctive cultural treasures. Monfort observed, experienced, and translated that living reality into images that carry its emotional resonance beyond the streets where it unfolds.
Yet the installation’s power does not reside solely in its scenes of festivity. Beneath the music, the dancing and the abundant hospitality lies a spiritual dimension inseparable from the historical identity of the Azores. Costa singles out an especially moving moment in which the participants of each despensa, standing together with their arms around one another, sing a hymn in praise of the Holy Spirit. The image highlights the relationship between celebration and devotion, between the sacred and the everyday, and between the religious inheritance of earlier generations and its continuing expression through communal life.
Devotion to the Holy Spirit holds a singular place in Azorean culture. Across the archipelago and throughout the diaspora, its festivities have long united religious symbolism with acts of charity, shared meals, and the conviction that abundance finds its fullest meaning when shared with others. In Rabo de Peixe, the despensas embody that spirit through a celebration in which faith is not confined to a church or formal ceremony. It enters the streets, accompanies the music, gathers neighbors and visitors, and finds expression in the offering of food and the pleasure of collective participation.
The setting itself becomes an essential character in Monfort’s work. Rabo de Peixe is transformed by the presence of its people. Narrow streets, carefully decorated for the occasion, fill with movement and sound. The town’s ordinary architecture becomes the backdrop for an extraordinary human encounter. Day and night, residents and visitors participate in an atmosphere that resists easy description: the mingling of voices, the rhythms of dancing, the fragrance of food, the spontaneous conversations and the unmistakable feeling that the entire community has temporarily become one great gathering place.
There is something profoundly theatrical about such a celebration, although its participants are not actors performing for a passive audience. Everyone is both witness and participant. The streets become a stage without separating performer from spectator. The celebration belongs equally to those who organize it, those who sustain its customs, and those who arrive to experience it. Its beauty emerges precisely from that collective authorship, from the understanding that no individual possesses the tradition because the tradition belongs to everyone who helps keep it alive.
In this respect, Monfort’s video installation raises an important question about the relationship between contemporary art and traditional culture. Too often, cultural heritage is approached as something fragile and distant, a collection of customs to be documented before they disappear. Yet living traditions cannot be adequately understood as relics. They evolve through participation, acquiring new meanings as generations reinterpret the inheritance they receive. Contemporary audiovisual art can contribute to that process, not by replacing the original experience, but by offering new ways of seeing it and by extending its visibility to audiences who might otherwise never encounter it.
The artist’s camera becomes an instrument of cultural mediation, carrying the life of Rabo de Peixe into the contemplative space of a museum. What takes place amid the movement and noise of the streets is transformed into an artistic encounter, inviting viewers to observe details they might overlook during the celebration itself: a gesture of welcome, a spontaneous smile, the intimacy of people singing together, or the moment when individual faces become part of a larger communal expression. The installation does not remove the tradition from its origins; rather, it offers another perspective from which its richness can be appreciated.
Nevertheless, as António Pedro Costa perceptively observes, no photograph, film, or written description can fully communicate what it means to experience the despensas firsthand. The tradition’s essential nature lies in participation. One must walk through the streets of Rabo de Peixe, listen to the music, accept the invitation to join the dancing, share the food and encounter the people whose generosity gives the celebration its character. The difference between observing and participating is the difference between understanding a tradition intellectually and allowing oneself to become, however briefly, part of its living reality.
This distinction gives Monfort’s work an additional significance. Beyond documenting cultural heritage, the installation may awaken curiosity and inspire people to visit Rabo de Peixe, encounter its residents and discover the traditions that distinguish the community. For Azoreans who have never experienced the despensas, it invites them to recognize the diversity of cultural expressions within their own archipelago. For visitors from mainland Portugal and abroad, it reveals a dimension of São Miguel that cannot be reduced to its volcanic landscapes, coastal scenery, or familiar tourist attractions.
Presenting this work at PDL26 also shows how cultural capital can serve a purpose beyond organizing concerts, exhibitions, and performances. Its deeper contribution may lie in making visible the richness of communities whose cultural expressions have not always received the attention they deserve. When contemporary artists engage respectfully with local traditions, they create opportunities for dialogue between generations, artistic disciplines and different ways of understanding cultural identity. The heritage of Rabo de Peixe becomes not merely a local possession but part of a broader conversation about memory, belonging and the human necessity of gathering together.
Costa’s gratitude toward Monfort is therefore more than a personal expression of admiration. It recognizes the value of an artistic encounter in which someone from outside the community approaches its traditions with sensitivity and respect. The Spanish artist did not create the beauty he discovered. That beauty already existed in the streets, the people, the rituals and the shared memories of Rabo de Peixe. His contribution was to recognize it, interpret it, and make it visible through another artistic language.
The installation, scheduled to remain on view at Igreja do Colégio until January 17, offers audiences an opportunity to experience that interpretation. Yet its most enduring achievement may be the desire it awakens to move beyond the museum and encounter the tradition where it truly belongs: among the people of Rabo de Peixe.
For cultural heritage survives not because it is admired from a distance, but because people continue to inhabit it. It lives when children learn the songs of their elders, when families prepare food to share, when neighbors gather in familiar streets, and when newcomers are welcomed into celebrations whose meanings extend far beyond the immediate pleasure of festivity. The preservation of such traditions is not merely an obligation to the past. It is an affirmation of the kind of society we wish to sustain: one in which generosity remains a public virtue, belonging is offered rather than withheld, and cultural identity is strengthened through participation rather than isolation.
In the images captured by Rúben Monfort, the despensas become a luminous expression of that possibility. The ocean that has shaped the history of Rabo de Peixe, the land upon which generations have built their lives, and the streets where the community gathers are brought together in a visual meditation on continuity and affection.
And perhaps that is the deepest beauty of this tradition: it transforms the simplest human gestures into an enduring language of belonging. A hand extended, a place offered at a table, a song shared among neighbors, a circle opening to welcome someone new—these are the ordinary miracles through which a community recognizes itself.
For there are traditions that can be explained, traditions that can be photographed and traditions that can be preserved in the moving images of a film. But the despensas of Rabo de Peixe belong to that rarer category of cultural inheritance whose meaning is only fully revealed when it is lived.
When the music begins, when the food is shared, when the decorated streets fill with laughter, and the circle opens to receive another person, something greater than a festival takes place. A people becomes visible to itself. Its history finds a voice in the present. Its generosity becomes a form of collective memory.
For a moment, in the streets of Rabo de Peixe, the distance between stranger and neighbor disappears, and belonging becomes as natural as opening one’s arms.
Understanding the tradition of the despensas of Rabo de Peixe
The despensas are a centuries-old communal tradition in Rabo de Peixe, a coastal town on the island of São Miguel, closely associated with the Azorean devotion to the Holy Spirit. They bring together groups of participants, families, neighbors and visitors in celebrations that combine shared food, music, dancing, fellowship and religious expression.
In the context described by António Pedro Costa, each despensa is associated with a group of companions who participate in the festivities, welcome others and share in the collective celebration. Food and hospitality are central elements. At the same time, the decorated streets become gathering places where people dance, sing and socialize. One particularly meaningful ritual occurs when the companions stand together, embracing one another, and sing a hymn in praise of the Holy Spirit.
The tradition reflects a fundamental principle of the Azorean Holy Spirit festivities: sharing what one has with others. Its significance extends beyond the distribution of food or the enjoyment of music. It strengthens relationships between neighbors, passes cultural practices from one generation to the next, and creates a welcoming space where visitors can participate in community life.
Unlike a performance organized solely for spectators, the despensas are fundamentally participatory. Their cultural meaning emerges from the people who organize, sustain, and experience them. In this sense, they represent both a celebration of faith and an enduring expression of the communal solidarity that has shaped Azorean society for centuries.
Based on a story in Correio dos Açores by António Pedro Costa. Photos from CA and RTP-Açores.