Azores

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Azores sit roughly 1,400 km west of the Portuguese mainland, rising from the Atlantic like the tips of mountains too tall for the ocean to swallow. Mount Pico, the highest point in all of Portugal at 2,351 metres, is just one of these peaks. Measured from the ocean floor, the islands rank among the tallest mountains on the planet. Nine volcanic islands, scattered across more than 600 km of open sea, form an archipelago that is simultaneously the westernmost territory of Portugal and a front-row seat to one of the most geologically restless spots on Earth. The islands sit precisely where three of the world's great tectonic plates collide: the North American, the Eurasian, and the African. That junction has shaped everything here, from the shape of the land to the story of the people who dared to live on it. How did settlers survive on ground that could shake and erupt without warning? What brought Flemings, Sephardic Jews, and Africans to these remote volcanic peaks? And why, centuries later, did world leaders choose this archipelago for one of the most consequential summits of the early 21st century? The answers run deep into the rock itself.

• 2. Fire Beneath the Islands

  ›

  Santa Maria, the oldest of the islands, first broke the ocean surface during the Miocene epoch roughly 8.12 million years ago. Pico, the youngest, emerged only 0.27 million years ago, making it a geological newborn. The sequence of birth runs from east to west, each island punched upward by the rifting and volcanic activity concentrated along the Terceira Rift, a system of fractures extending some 550 km from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge toward the Glória Fault. From the time Portuguese settlers arrived in the 15th century through to recorded history, 28 volcanic eruptions have been counted across the archipelago, 15 on land and 13 beneath the sea. The last major eruption on land was the Capelinhos volcano off the coast of Faial in 1957. The most severe earthquake on record struck near Calheta in 1757, registering above magnitude 7. Even the 1522 earthquake, which measured 6.8, was judged Extreme on the Mercalli intensity scale. Its landslides may have killed more than 5,000 people in Vila Franca do Campo alone. Each island carries its own geological personality: Corvo is the remnant crater of a Plinian eruption; São Jorge is a long, narrow island built up over thousands of years by fissural eruptions; and Terceira, almost circular, contains one of the largest craters in the region. Lava tubes, calderas, and coastal lava fields are not curiosities here; they are the architecture of daily life.

• 3. Before the Portuguese

  ›

  Portuguese archaeologist Nuno Ribeiro identified a small number of alleged hypogea, underground structures carved into rock, on the islands of Corvo, Santa Maria, and Terceira. He speculated these might date back 2,000 years, implying human presence before the Portuguese arrived. Settlers later used the same chambers to store grain, but whether the structures are natural formations or burial sites remains unconfirmed; detailed dating has not been completed. A statue of a man on horseback was found on Corvo by Diogo de Teive, alongside what were reported as Carthaginian coins discovered in 1749. A 2015 paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology traced the mitochondrial DNA of local mice to Scandinavian rather than Portuguese origins. Then in 2021, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published research using lake sediment core samples suggesting brush-clearing and animal husbandry were introduced to the islands between 700 and 850 A.D. The same paper cited climate simulations indicating that westerly winds in the North Atlantic were weaker during that period, which would have made the voyage from Scandinavia more feasible for Viking ships. Whether Norse settlers actually lived here, or simply passed through, remains an open question. What is clear is that the Portuguese, when they arrived, found islands that held more history than they expected.

• 4. Settlement and Its Settlers

  ›

  In 1427 a captain sailing for Prince Henry the Navigator, possibly Gonçalo Velho, may have sighted the Azores, though the record is uncertain. From 1433 onwards, Gonçalo Velho Cabral gathered resources and settlers; he sailed in 1436 to establish the first colonies, beginning on Santa Maria and then São Miguel. Settlement of the unoccupied islands began formally in 1439 with people drawn mainly from the continental provinces of Algarve and Alentejo. São Miguel received its first settlers in 1449 under Cabral's command, landing at the site of what is now Povoação. By 1490, roughly 2,000 Flemings were living across Terceira, Pico, Faial, São Jorge, and Flores, and the islands became known as the Flemish Islands or the Isles of Flanders. This Flemish wave traced back to Prince Henry's sister Isabel, who was married to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. When revolt and famine swept Flanders, Isabel appealed to her brother to allow some of the displaced Flemings to settle in the Azores. Henry agreed and supplied them with transport and provisions. One early Flemish settler, Willem van der Haegen, arrived at Topo on São Jorge and became so rooted to the island that locals renamed him Guilherme da Silveira; he lived and died there. The first Sephardic Jews arrived as slaves following their expulsion from Portugal by King Manuel I in 1496. Africans from Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, along with Italians, Spaniards, and Moors, all joined the mix. The culture, cuisine, and dialect of the islands still vary considerably from one to another, a legacy of settlers who arrived across a span of two centuries.

• 5. War, Resistance, and Empire

  ›

  Portugal fell into dynastic crisis after the death of Cardinal-King Henry in 1580, and the most powerful claimant was King Philip II of Spain, whose mother was a Portuguese royal princess and whose maternal grandfather was King Manuel I. On the 19th of July 1580, António, Prior of Crato, was acclaimed King of Portugal in Santarém. The Azores, through his envoy António da Costa, supported his claim. What followed was years of resistance. The Azoreans fought Spanish attempts to control the islands, including at the Battle of Salga, and were governed by Cipriano de Figueiredo on Terceira, who continued to rule in the name of the deposed former king. Figueiredo and Violante do Canto together organised resistance on the island. In 1583 Philip sent his fleet to clear the archipelago of the multinational force that had gathered around the rival claimant. After his fleet won at the Battle of Ponta Delgada, Philip had captured enemies hanged from the yardarms of ships, classifying them as pirates. Spain held the Azores under what Azoreans called the Babylonian captivity, from 1580 to 1642. Portuguese control resumed not through professional soldiers, who were occupied on the mainland, but through local people who attacked a fortified Castilian garrison directly. An English raid in 1589 successfully plundered some islands and captured ships; a second raid eight years later failed. The Azores were not merely a remote outpost of empire. They were a battleground where the ownership of the Atlantic world was contested.

• 6. Emigration and the Atlantic Corridor

  ›

  In 1902 the Dominion Line opened a Mediterranean passenger service connecting Boston to Italy via Gibraltar and the Azores, with São Miguel as a port of call. By 1904 the White Star Line took over. Four former Dominion ships, renamed Canopic, Romanic, Cretic, and Republic, moved into service under the new flag. Republic is best remembered for its sinking off the New England coast in 1909. By the time the service ended in 1921, these four ships had carried an estimated 58,000 Azorean Portuguese to the United States. Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts became the primary destinations. From 1921 to 1977, roughly 250,000 Azoreans immigrated to those two states alone. Many then moved on to Northern California, settling in the San Joaquin Valley and the city of Turlock. The tuna fishing industry drew a significant number to the Point Loma neighbourhood of San Diego. In the late 19th century, many Azoreans had already reached Hawaii. Florianópolis and Porto Alegre in southern Brazil were founded by Azoreans, who at one point accounted for more than half the population of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. The Great Recession added a new wave: Portugal's recession from 2011 to 2013 pushed unemployment high enough to revive mass emigration from the islands. The Azores have always produced two exports above all others: volcanic rock and people.

• 7. Strategic Ground

  ›

  In 1943, during World War II, Portuguese ruler António de Oliveira Salazar leased air and naval bases in the Azores to Great Britain. The British occupation of those facilities in October 1943 was codenamed Operation Alacrity. Placing allied aircraft and ships in the mid-Atlantic closed a dangerous surveillance gap; Royal Air Force and U.S. forces could now provide aerial coverage over the Mid-Atlantic gap, protecting convoys and hunting German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. In 1945 a base was constructed on Terceira: Lajes Field, built on a plateau rising from the northeast corner of the island that had formerly been a large farm. During the Cold War, U.S. Navy P-3 Orion squadrons patrolled from Lajes Field, scanning the North Atlantic for Soviet submarines and surface warships. The base has since served American cargo planes bound for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2003, United States President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, and Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso held a summit in the Azores in the days before the commencement of the Iraq War. A plateau on a volcanic island, first cleared as farmland and then repurposed as a military airfield, had become a stage for one of the most consequential diplomatic meetings of the early 21st century.

• 8. Life on the Archipelago

  ›

  Temperatures in the Azores rarely climb above 30 degrees Celsius or dip below 3 degrees in the main population centres, a mildness produced by the Gulf Stream and the islands' distance from any continent. Rainfall increases dramatically from east to west: Santa Maria receives around 700 mm annually while Flores receives roughly 1,600 mm, and the highlands of Pico can see values above 5,000 mm. At least 6,112 terrestrial species have been recorded in the archipelago, of which about 411 are endemic. Roughly 75 percent of those endemics are animals, mostly arthropods and mollusks. Around 30 new species of land snails were discovered in the islands circa 2013 alone. The Azores bullfinch, known locally as the Priolo, is restricted to remnant laurissilva forest at the eastern end of São Miguel and is classified as endangered by BirdLife International. Monteiro's storm petrel was described to science only in 2008 and is known to breed in just two locations. More than half the insect species on Graciosa are estimated to have disappeared or to be facing extinction, a result of six centuries of land clearing. The festivals of the Holy Spirit, rooted in millenarian tradition and held on all islands from May to September, draw communities around shared meals and charity within the impérios, small ornate buildings maintained by local brotherhoods. The Festival of Lord Holy Christ of the Miracles in Ponta Delgada, held on Rogation Sunday, is the largest single religious event in the archipelago, drawing pilgrims from the Portuguese diaspora across the world to walk behind the image of Christ through flower-decorated streets. The Rallye Açores, an international rally race held annually since 1965, has been part of both the European Rally Championship and the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, bringing a different kind of visitor to these same roads.