VRSA is turning into quite the party venue, as the council is organising a series of events marking the city’s 244th anniversary on Sunday, 13th - and its patron saint, Santa Maria.
The celebrations will start on Saturday, 12th, when from 10:00 am, in the Municipal Archive, there will be a conference, a guided tour of the Pombaline area and the opening of an exhibition, ‘VRSA and the work of José Sande de Vasconcelos,’ the noted military engineer and cartographer.
Also on Saturday, from 16:00, there will be friendly football at the Municipal Stadium involving Lusitano FC veterans, Vitória de Setúbal and FC Valdebebas from Madrid.
On Sunday, 13th May, the festivities begin with the flag ceremony at 9:00 a.m. in Marquês de Pombal square. From 10:30, awards will be handed out, amid much ceremony, at the António Aleixo Cultural Centre - a rather formal session at which certain local people will receive honours for their civic contributions.
After this session, at 1:00 p.m. there is another formal ceremony at Vila Nova de Cacela roundabout, in honour of the Old Combatants of the Overseas Wars.
On Sunday, at 9:30 p.m., Marquês de Pombal square will be the stage for a tribute to Amália Rodrigues, with fadistas Filipa Sousa, Argentina Freire and Inês Gonçalves.
History
In the 17th century, the vila (town) of Santo António was an important frontier outpost, controlling commerce and developing the lucrative fishing grounds, there establishing canning and conservation industry.
In the 17th century, the vila (town) of Santo António was an important frontier outpost, controlling commerce and developing the lucrative fishing grounds, there establishing canning and conservation industry.
Vila Real de Santo António was a relatively recent community; the region was sparsely populated prior to its foundation and Cacela was the municipal seat of the existing municipality. For centuries, Castro Marim was the only large town guarding the border with Spain, and the settlements in the region were small and undefended.
On 30 December 1773, during the reign of Joseph I, a royal decree ordering the creation of a new town at the tip of the Algarve.
The impetus for this decision is unclear, but there was several justifications for enhancing the settlement of the region, which included: increasing the human presence near the Spanish border, to prevent any incursions; to better control duties charged on cross-border activity; to be better defend the region from a full-scale attack; or to provoke Spain with a modern settlement that was easily seen from Ayamonte; or to simply rebuild the nearby town fishing village of Santo António de Arenilha and resettle its population.
Santo António de Arenilha was destroyed by the same tsunami that was triggered by the devastating 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Regardless, the settlement was erected at great speed for the time (in only two years) and completed in 1776 using the latest technologies.
The Marquês of Pombal was responsible for the city's planning, designing the town in a Pombaline orthogonal grid, which he also used during the reconstruction of Lisbon.
In a pioneering technique, entire buildings were prefabricated in areas outside the town, and then transported to their final destination to be assembled, which permitted a fast and methodical construction of the town. Along the river, the customhouses, was one of the first buildings to be completed during the Pombaline reconstruction, to house the offices of the Sociedades das Pescarias (fishing associations/societies), and dividing the settlement in two.
Vila Real de Santo António thrived on the growth of the fishing industry, which included the processing of species of tuna and sardine.
The new "Royal Town" of Santo António (Vila Real de Santo António) soon became the seat of the municipality, stripping the once important town of Cacela from this status. Cacela had, in the intervening years, gone into a steady decline as a result of the 1755 earthquake and attacks from English pirates and privateers.
In 1886, it became the first city in the Algarve to have gas lighting installed.
As the fishing industry went into decline (around the 1960s), tourism quickly took over as the principal economic livelihood for many of its residents.
