The first volume of the «Encyclopedic Survey of the Families of the Municipality of Vila Nova de Portimão», a documentary chronology by Nuno Campos Inácio, will be presented on November 8th, at 21 pm, at the Colégio de Portimão Church.
This is the first volume of «a vast work (consisting of 5 volumes), which has around 2.000 pages, with documents produced up to the elevation of Portimão to city, on December 11, 1924», and which is «the result of a documentary and genealogical investigation to which the author has dedicated himself for 17 years».
Integrated into the festivities of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Patroness of the city of Portimão, the choice of the location for the presentation is associated with the work itself, since among the documents that make up the work the presentation are those donated by Diogo Gonçalves, which allowed the construction of the monument, but also the founding documents of several old chapels in the city, now disappeared, but whose religious images are part of the various altars of the Colégio Church», according to the author of the work.
The presentation ceremony will also feature a musical performance by the Portimão Music Academy and a recitation of poems by the poet Manuel Neto dos Santos.
The work to be presented, published by Arandis Editora, has 400 pages, is prefaced by José Carlos Vilhena Mesquita and consists of a list of 997 documents about the municipality of Portimão, organized chronologically and produced between 1189 and 1699, many of them being fully transcribed and published for the first time and others presented in summary form.
This private initiative constitutes «the start of the celebrations of the centenary of the elevation of Vila Nova de Portimão to a city and of the author's 25 years of literary production».
«With the full presentation of the work, the community will have at its disposal a vast set of documents, which constitute an indispensable collection for understanding the historical evolution of the municipality, for learning more about its ancestors, for understanding the political administration and administration of the municipality, how urban expansion evolved, when certain monuments and buildings were built, who their founders were... Basically they will have a list of all the large and small events recorded in some documentary format», he describes.
Following the model established for other works of the same genre already completed, such as the Encyclopedic Surveys of the Families of Barão de São Miguel, Sagres (3 volumes) and Ferragudo (3 volumes), «this work only diverges due to its much larger dimension and for working simultaneously in all parishes in the municipality of Portimão (Alvor, Mexilhoeira Grande, Portimão and the former parish of Senhora do Verde)».
The author and Arandis Editora decided to run a launch campaign with a special discount of 10 Euros per volume for those who pre-book the work or attend the launch ceremony in person, can be purchased here.
«We are faced with a work of unusual dimensions, not only in the time it covers but also in the composition of its documentary body, which is unusually extensive. I even dare to say that, in the current context of historical research, I do not know of any other work in the country that could be similar to this one, therefore lacking a term of comparison, which would allow for its measurement within the scope of national historiography. Therefore, it seems fair and necessary to me that this encyclopedic survey of the families of the municipality of Vila Nova de Portimão should be considered, as a unique and unparalleled work in national scientific production", considers the historian and professor Vilhena Mesquita, in the preface to the book.
Nuno Campos Inácio is from Portimão, graduated in Law and is currently pursuing a PhD in Heritage Studies at the University of Algarve. He began his literary activity in December 1999, being the author of 27 published titles and several articles included in magazines. In 2009 he launched the «Genealogy of the Algarve» portal, which in 2017 he began to compile into books, in this second phase with the support of the municipalities of Lagoa and Vila do Bispo. In 2016 he received an Honorable Mention from the Santos Stockler Literary Prize.
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