Santa Maria Da Feira Municipality
Santa Maria da Feira is a city and a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 215.1 km² and a total population of 140,494 inhabitants, and 107,458 voters.
The municipality is composed of 31 parishes, and is located in Aveiro District. The municipality includes several towns (vilas) and 3 cities (cidades): Santa Maria da Feira, Fiães and Lourosa. It is the most populous municipio in Entre Douro e Vouga and it is part of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto.
The current Mayor is Alfredo de Oliveira Henriques, elected by the Social Democratic Party.
The municipal holiday is January 20. It's the day when the whole municipality celebrates the Fogaceiras. The Fogaceiras is a special local holiday. During the Middle Ages, the lands of Santa Maria (as it was known back then) were infested by the dark plague. To get rid of this calamity, the locals offered a sweet roll, called fogaça, to the patron saint Saint Sebastien. The Fogaceiras have been celebrated for five hundred years, since the eradication of the dark plague.
The municipality has a science museum, the Visionarium.
Read more about Santa Maria Da Feira Municipality: History, Main Sights, Economy, Demographics, Cities and Towns, Parishes, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words santa and/or maria:
“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
—Shirley Temple Black (b. 1928)
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)