Sirens of the Azores
Ribeirinha
A village on the north coast of São Miguel
Ribeirinha is a freguesia — a civil parish — of the city of Ribeira Grande, on the north coast of São Miguel in the Azores. 2,510 people at the 2021 census. One church, one band, one Casa do Povo, one closed harbour, and a procession that is too long to walk in a day.
What does the name mean?
Little river.
The sixteenth-century chronicler Gaspar Frutuoso explained it plainly: it is the small one, because Ribeira Grande next door is the big one. He found the place "de boas e frescas águas, bem povoado" of good and fresh waters, well populated.
It has been named in relation to its larger neighbour for five hundred years, and it still is.
Where is it?
On the north coast, between Ribeira Grande and the sea, on the road east. Ponta Delgada and the airport are about twenty-five minutes away over the middle of the island.
It is not on the tourist route. There is no viewpoint here, no crater and no hotel. The bus stops in it.
What is the church?
The parish church is dedicated to the Santíssimo Salvador do Mundo. It was begun in 1826 and finished in 1861.
Thirty-five years, built by a parish of smallholders.
A hermitage stood on the site before it. In 1630 that hermitage sheltered hermits fleeing the eruption in the Vale das Furnas — the far side of the island, arriving on foot.
It currently closed, due to a hole in the roof that is waiting for 2 years to be repaired.
Is there a band?
Yes. The filarmónica was founded on 2 February 1877 by Padre José Lucindo da Graça, and it still rehearses.
The date is cut into the front of the building.
Nearly every village on São Miguel had a philharmonic society. Not all of them still have one that plays.
The building is right next to the Golden Mermaid Villa Garage, which is directly behind the church.
What did people do here?
Farming, mostly, and three things that are gone.
Whaling, from Porto de Santa Iria below the village, begun in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, running through the nineteenth, finished before 1929.
A linen factory, opened in 1923 "para rentabilizar os terrenos agrícolas," to make the farmland pay. It employed the women of the village.
A chicory works. There were two on São Miguel. This was one of them. The building is still standing, behind a green hoarding, and no heritage inventory has ever recorded it, there is no SIPA entry, no municipal classification and no public description beyond an archived geocache page. It is a substantial early concrete-and-stone industrial building that officially does not exist.
What happens in August?
The streets are carpeted for the procession.
It is not petals. The wood chips are dyed a week beforehand. The flowers are picked the same morning. The carpet is laid before the procession walks it and swept up the day after.
Tapete de flores or flower carpets are laid across the Azores, and on the Portuguese mainland, and in Madeira — usually on one main road through the old centre of a place. What is unusual here is the length. Ribeirinha's route cannot be walked in a day, so it is walked over two, on two different routes.
And at the festa there is a Mass of thanksgiving for the emigrants.
Is there a harbour?
Yes, Porto de Santa Iria, below the village, cut into the cliff five hundred years ago. It is closed.
It is the reason the village had an economy: the wheat went out of it, then the oranges, then the whales. Money is now committed to rehabilitating it.
The full history of Porto de Santa Iria — the 1525 contract, the wrecks, the whaling ramps, and the rehabilitation.
What is the Casa do Povo?
A parish social institution, founded here in 1955. Every village on São Miguel has one, and most of them still work.
The Casas do Povo were set up across Portugal from the 1930s. On the mainland most of them faded. In the Azores they did not, and here it is still the building where the parish meets.
The village shop that ran in it was housed by D. Inês Almeida, who charged no rent and paid the electricity.
What is the house with the veranda?
Avenida Joaquim Maria Cabral, number 19. Built in 1929.
Above the door a veranda runs the full width of the house on four fluted columns, and its balustrade is pierced with a repeating five-petal flower, cast in cement and faced with basalt dust, from a mould we have not found used anywhere else on the island.
Its windows are American: six panes over one, sliding on cords and iron weights hidden inside the frames. That mechanism has no Portuguese vernacular tradition. It is what the islands call a casa da América, a house built by someone who went to America and came home.
The avenue is named after a former owner of it.
It is now the Golden Mermaid Villa, and the author of Of the Water lives in it. goldenmermaidvilla.com
What is being built here?
A museum.
Sirens of the Azores · Casa das Sereias e Piratas will open in 2030, in a 300 m² building held by the Associação de Piratas e Sereias de São Miguel on a ten-year lease from the Junta de Freguesia da Ribeirinha. The building is publicly owned. The association is registered in Ponta Delgada.
It is a museum of the mermaid across three thousand years, and of Atlantic piracy told from the side that was raided.
Can I visit?
Yes, and there is not much to see, which is the point.
The church is open when it is open. The band's building has the date on it. The harbour road is signed PROIBIDO and the harbour is closed. The chicory factory is behind boarding. In August the streets are carpeted and everything happens at once.
Come in August, or come when nothing is happening. Both are the village.
Sources
Gaspar Frutuoso, Saudades da Terra · Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Censos 2021 · Arquivo dos Açores · Direção Regional da Cultura · Governo dos Açores contract notices, November 2025 · US Immigration Act of 1924 · Public Law 85-892, 2 September 1958.
Every date on this page is checkable. If you find one wrong, tell us and we will correct it — [email].
Is this village in the book?
Of the Water · 9 Sereias dos Açores is an account of four years spent on this coast being told the history of nine immortal guardians of the Atlantic. The narrator lives at number 19. The harbour below the village is where he goes.
The village, the church, the band, the factories and the procession are all in it, and all of them are real. What to make of the nine is left to the reader.
Where did everybody go?
America, and then Canada.
Around 150,000 Azoreans emigrated to the United States between 1850 and 1930, many of them out of whaling crews working from New Bedford and Nantucket.
Then the door closed. The Immigration Act of 1924 cut Portugal's quota to 438 visas a year for the whole country.
So the population rose, because nobody could leave from 231,543 in the Azores in 1920 to an all-time peak of 327,476 in 1960.
Then it opened again. The Saturnia landed the first organised group of Portuguese labourers at Halifax on 13 May 1953. The Capelinhos eruption of 27 September 1957 buried farmland on Faial, and the Azorean Refugee Act of 2 September 1958, co-sponsored by Senators John O. Pastore and John F. Kennedy, reopened the United States.
Between 1960 and 1981 the Azores lost 84,000 people. Twenty-six per cent, in twenty-one years.
Fall River. New Bedford. The San Joaquin Valley. Toronto, which Azoreans call a décima ilha — the tenth island.
If your family left this parish, this is the village they left.