Dâmaso Augusto Silva do Nascimento, the businessman who, a decade ago, recovered the tradition of the canning industry in Vila Real de Santo António, died yesterday, aged 65, a victim of sudden illness.
The funeral of the businessman, founder and responsible, with his wife, for Conservas Dâmaso, will be this afternoon, at 15 pm, at the cemetery of Vila Real de Santo António.
Damaso do Nascimento had been struggling for some years with a serious illness, but the situation was apparently under control, as he told the Sul Informação a friend of the family.
Dâmaso do Nascimento was the final production director at Comalpe, the last canning factory to close in the city of Guadiana, in 2003, as well as at BelaOlhão, in Olhão.
With a lifetime linked to canning, Dâmaso decided to ask for support from the IEFP and invest, also with some equity, in a canning factory installed since June 2005 in the industrial zone of VRSA, which was dedicated, from the beginning, to producing traditional canned foods – muxama and stupid – with tuna.
The company immediately began to supply local restaurants with snacks that were in danger of being forgotten, such as muxama (a part of the fish loin, salted and cured as if it were ham) or stupeta (salted strips subject to washing in the height of consumption). «Nothing is thrown away, that's the peculiarity we have here in the city. What I don't sell fresh, salt and sell later, to individuals or to restaurants», explained, in 2008, the owner of Conservas Dâmaso.
The muxama and the stupeta, recovered as a snack good gourmet food, eventually became the best known products, sold throughout the Algarve and the rest of the country, and even exported to Spain.
Having been an activist in the fight against the closure of canning companies in the Algarve, even though he is now a businessman, Dâmaso Nascimento never stopped get your hands dirty and work on the cutting and preparation of the tuna. As well as maintaining this activist facet, having been, in the last Legislative Elections in 2015, a candidate (as alternate) for deputy by the PCTP/MRPP.
Dâmaso Nascimento leaves behind a widow, three children and five grandchildren. It should be the woman who succeeds him in charge of the management of the canning plant.
“Dâmaso Nascimento deserves our tribute and an effort not to lose his work of reviving the traditional canning industry”, highlighted a family friend, also linked to the agribusiness sector in the Eastern Algarve.
adjusted at 12:14 pm on January 22, adding the correct number of children and grandchildren.
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