Ponta Do Pargo - History

History

The name of the parish, as the historian Gaspar Frutuoso explained, came from early explorers to the western tip of the island of Madeira, whom fished the waters and caught a species of porgy.

"From Calheta the captain passed below an area that ended at a point over the sea...and being here, they collected from the boat of Tristão and the boat of Álvaro Afonso a fish that looked like porgy, of a marvellous greatness and the largest that, until that time, was ever seen; for this reason, because of the fish, the point was named porgy. From this Ponta do Pargo look to the North until another point, whose distance one says is two, other say three, leagues..."

The settlement began with Garcia da Câmara, son-in-law of João Gonçalves Zarco, who here began establishing small estates run by colonists who tilled the land. Many of the lands in the parish were originally in the name of Garcia da Câmara and Afonso Henriques, Master of Alcáçovas (dated to the 16th century). The date for the creation of the parish remains a mystery. In the opinion of Father Fernando Augusto da Silva, it occurred in the late 1560s, since the regal document on 4 March of the same year referred to the congregation of this parish. Meanwhile, the lands of the civil parish pertained, at the time, to the neighbouring parish of Fajã da Ovelha.

The parish of Ponta do Pargo was incorporated into the municipality of Porto Moniz, between 31 October 1835 and 1849, until that municipality was suppressed during the administrative reforms of the Liberal regime. Porto Moniz, along with Ponta do Pargo, therefore began to function as a part of the much larger municipality of Calheta. The restoration of the municipality of Porto Moniz in 1855, resulted in the reincorporation of the parish of Ponta do Pargo. On 26 June 1851, Ponta do Pargo was deannexed from Porto Moniz and reintegrated into the municipality of Calheta (as it remains today).

Owing to the extreme geology of the western coast, with its cliffs and rocky coast, a lighthouse was constructed in the heights of Ponta da Vigia, at the extreme westerly promontory of the parish, inaugurated on 5 June 1922.