Association | Sirens of the Azores

Associação de Piratas e Sereias de São Miguel

A community association on São Miguel, building a museum

Who we are?

Associação de Piratas e Sereias de São Miguel is twenty people in a village on the north coast of São Miguel who decided the island should have a pirate and mermaid museum, and are building one. We have put on two events so far. Between them we sing sea shanties, sew our own pirate clothes, practise sword fighting, and spin fire. Some of us were born here, some arrived from elsewhere and stayed, and some live across the diaspora and come home for the festa. There is a museum to fund, a festival to run and a procession to walk through our own streets — but most of what happens on an ordinary evening is people discovering they can do something they did not know they could do.

You do not have to be Portuguese, and you do not have to be able to sing.

Why an association?

Because in the Azores it is how things get built. The associação is the oldest and most durable civic form on these islands — the structure behind the filarmónicas, the Holy Spirit brotherhoods, the Casas do Povo and the fishing cooperatives. The archipelago holds more than three hundred Holy Spirit brotherhoods and runs at least four hundred festivals a year, in a population of 236,000. Mainland Portugal, with forty times the people, has just over a hundred such festivals recorded in its entire documented history.

These islands did not keep those things by accident. They kept them because neighbours organised, elected a board, kept minutes and took turns. We are doing the same thing for a museum.

Is this real, or is it part of the book?

Yes, it's real. The association is registered in Ponta Delgada. It has held six meetings, taken part in two island events, and is preparing a third. The board meets, the minutes are filed, and the building for the museum is secured on a ten-year lease from the Junta de Freguesia da Ribeirinha. The book Of the Water is the instrument that funds all of this, but the association is a working institution that exists whether or not you ever read a page.

The mermaids are the one thing in this project you are free to make up your own mind about. The association is not one of them.

What we are building?

Associação de Piratas e Sereias de São Miguel is building a museum of the mermaid across three thousand years and every seafaring culture that has one, and of Atlantic piracy told from the Azorean side of the rail, by the islands that were raided rather than the men who did the raiding. At its centre stands the hand-built Golden Mermaid Brig.

The building is leased from the freguesia — publicly owned, in the association's hands on a ten-year lease.

It comes in three steps. The museum opens in 2030, with a second phase in 2031. Then, in 2032, a theatre opens in a separate building beside it — sixty-five seats, an underwater stage, and choreographed mermaid shows running several times a day.

Between now and then the association is raising the money, running the events, and building the audience that will walk through the door.

Can I Join?

Yes, and right now it is the most useful thing you can do. Membership is open to anyone, on the island or off it. Members fund the museum, are counted in the association's public support, and are the first told when the book launches in January 2027.

Become a member — Associado, €12 a year, with a vote at the general assembly.
Join for life — Associado Vitalício, €120 once, before the museum opens.
Make a one-time gift to the museum fund.
Follow along as an Amigo — free, permanent. You get what we send, a few times a year, when there is something real to report.

Where does the money go?

To the museum, and to the events and crafts that build toward it. The association files its minutes and its accounts as every Azorean association does. When the book sells, the proceeds come here. That is the whole design: a book that funds a building, through an institution that outlasts both the writing and the author.