The «Feast in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes – Ilha da Culatra» is already registered in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, according to an announcement by the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage published today, July 16, in the Diário da República.
According to the advertisement, the inscription of this festival of the island of Culatra in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage highlights the «importance of this manifestation of intangible cultural heritage as a reflection of the identity of the surrounding community and its historical depth and evident relationship with others practices inherent to the community».
The Festa in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes, or simply, the Festa da Ilha, takes place on the first weekend of August.
The highlight is the procession through the Ria Formosa, on the first Sunday of every August, which begins with the removal of the image of the patron saint of the fishing community of Culatra from the local chapel, to be taken aboard a fishing vessel, to Olhão .
On the city's wharf, the maritime procession collects the image of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, the patron saint of Olhão, and begins the return to Culatra, where there is then a procession through the streets of the fishing centre, with both images, and a mass.
It is a tradition that updates and reinvents itself, revealing a strong dynamic that reflects the intense pulse of life in the community in which it operates, a place of fishermen and shellfish collectors, located in one of the Ria Formosa barrier islands.
The image that represents the patron saint, with her little boat in her hand, is unique and unmistakable among the other fishing communities in Portugal and Brazil, where her cult is celebrated.
According to the PCI Matrix, the «greatest singularity» of this festival «is manifested in the realization of a fluvial procession that takes place in the Ria Formosa, between the city of Olhão and Ilha da Culatra, which provides the meeting of two Marian images that intersect the lagoon area of Ria to then carry out, together, a terrestrial procession in a community mobilization that is unique among the cultural expressions of the riverside populations of this region».
«Although it is secular in the history of popular devotion, the Marian invocation associated with the sea and the protection of fishing communities, is of recent tradition on the island, since the settlement of Lugar da Culatra is also recent».
«The Festival in Honor of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes, or Festa da Ilha, presents characteristics of a type of popular religiosity that claims for itself a very specific form of approximation to the divine that distances it from formal and traditional Catholic practice. It is an ephemeral moment, of personal and community encounter with the Divine, “in the way of the Breach”, that is why it is also a joyful time, of great fervor and exaltation, of total rupture with the daily work so often restless and anguished».
Photos: Filipe da Palma | Sul Informação – referring to the festival of August 2018
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