Praia

Praia grew up in the shadow of Ribeira Grande, now Cidade Velha, the first European town in the tropics, founded on this coast in 1462 and enriched by the Atlantic slave trade. Repeated raids on that exposed harbour — among them Francis Drake's in 1585 and Jacques Cassard's in 1712 — pushed settlement eastwards to a defensible flat-topped cliff above a sheltered bay. A settlement grew on this Plateau, gradually superseded the old town, and became the capital of the Portuguese colony in 1770; in 1858 it was formally made a city.

The nineteenth-century town on the Plateau took the shape it still has: a grid of streets around a central square, with the governor's palace, the customs house, the barracks, the church and the merchants' houses. Growth was slow, checked by the droughts and famines that repeatedly devastated Santiago and drove emigration, and the port never rivalled Mindelo's coal trade.

Independence in 1975 made Praia a national capital, and the city expanded dramatically as people moved in from the interior of Santiago and the other islands. Ministries, the university, banks and the airport turned it into the country's administrative and commercial centre, and its population has multiplied several times over since the 1970s. Development has spread across neighbouring plateaux and ravines, often faster than services could follow, and the city remains a place of rapid, uneven growth.

Praia's culture is strongly African-rooted, and it reflects the badiu identity of Santiago, one of the islands that received enslaved people directly from the West African mainland. Batuque, in which women beat rolled cloth on their laps and sing call-and-response verses of social commentary, and the finaçon chant that accompanies it, belong to this island, as does funaná, the accordion-driven dance music once discouraged by the colonial authorities and now heard everywhere.

The tabanka groups of Santiago, with their processions of drums and conch horns on holy days from May to July, also act as mutual-aid associations and remain a living tradition in villages around the capital. Catholicism and the saints' days structure the year.

As a capital the city is also the country's political and intellectual centre, with the parliament, the university and the national press. Its population is mixed — people from every island, plus West African traders, Chinese shopkeepers and Portuguese and Brazilian residents — and street life is louder, faster and less picturesque than in Mindelo, a contrast that Cabo Verdeans discuss endlessly and with some humour.

Around 160,000 people live in Praia, and its municipality holds more than a quarter of the national population; the wider urban area keeps growing as people arrive from Santiago's interior and the smaller islands. The Plateau is for work rather than living; most residents are in the achadas, the flat-topped hills around it, in a mixture of planned districts and self-built neighbourhoods.

The city runs on government, services and trade: ministries and the parliament, banks and telecoms, the university and technical colleges, the port, the airport, construction and a very large informal economy of market stalls and street vendors, much of it run by women. Fishing works from the coastal villages, and produce comes in daily from the island's interior valleys.

The day begins early and the Plateau empties in the evening when offices close, while the residential districts and the beaches fill. About a third of the city's people lived below the poverty line in 2014, traffic is heavy on the few roads linking the plateaux, and youth unemployment, housing and crime are the issues that dominate local politics.

Praia's food is Santiago's: heavier on maize, beans and pork than the northern islands, and closer to West African cooking. Cachupa, the national dish, is cooked here in its rich version with pork, sausage and several kinds of bean, and eaten again the next morning fried with an egg. Xerém, a coarse maize porridge served with fish or meat, is the other island staple, and each island has its own way with cachupa.

The coast supplies tuna, octopus and lobster, grilled or stewed with tomato and onion. Pastéis, fried pastries filled with fish or meat, are a common snack at market stalls and roadside stands, along with grilled maize cobs in season.

Fruit and vegetables from the interior valleys arrive daily at the city's markets, above all the Sucupira. To drink there is grogue, the sugarcane spirit distilled in Santiago's valleys and in Santo Antão, taken neat or as ponche, sweetened with cane molasses or condensed milk, alongside local beer, imported wine and strong coffee.