Festival in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes of Ilha da Culatra distinguished through an announcement by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage
The Municipality of Faro welcomes the recognition of the Festival in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes of Ilha da Culatra, in the municipality of Faro, as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.
According to the announcement of the decision of the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage, the inscription of the most representative festival of the fishing community of Ilha da Culatra in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage highlights the “importance of this manifestation of intangible cultural heritage as a reflection of identity of the surrounding community”, as well as “its historical depth and evident relationship with other practices inherent to the community”.
The inclusion of the festival in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage was proposed in 2019 by the Association of Residents of Ilha da Culatra, housing the nucleus of the barrier islands of Ria Formosa belonging to the municipality of Faro.
The festival in honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes has a procession on the first Sunday of each August, which begins with the removal of the image of the patron saint of the fishing community of Culatra from the local chapel to be taken aboard a fishing vessel, through the Ria Formosa, to Olhão. On the pier, the maritime procession collects the image of Nossa Senhora do Rosário and begins the return to Culatra, where a procession takes place through the streets of the fishing center and a mass.
Even so, according to the documentation of the event, “the Festival in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes cannot be considered to be just a religious festival when in reality it is an entire cultural manifestation in itself, which is also implicit in the most comprehensive way. as they consider it – the ‘Festival of the Island’”.
The Municipality of Faro thus welcomes another distinction of this magnitude, which recognizes not only the Festa but also the historic character of this fishing community in the municipality of Faro.
