Porto Moniz

It is not known exactly when the area of Porto Moniz was first settled, but it was probably at the beginning of the last quarter of the 15th century. One of the first landholders was Francisco Moniz, known as o Velho, a nobleman from the Algarve who married Filipa da Câmara, a granddaughter of João Gonçalves Zarco, the captain who had led the discovery of the islands. Moniz cleared land, set up a farm and built a chapel. The first settlers grew grain, raised cattle and cut timber.

From the 18th century vines were planted around Porto Moniz, and from the 19th century potatoes. The municipality was created on 31 October 1835 but had an unsettled start: it was abolished between 1849 and 1855, between 1867 and 1871 and again between 1895 and 1898.

The area has lost many of its people. Ribeira da Janela saw a mass departure in the 1960s from which it has never recovered, and in Achadas da Cruz no children were born between 2001 and 2009. Today the natural pools bring visitors from across the island.

The village's identity is bound up with the sea and the rocks. Its natural pools, where the Atlantic flows into basins in the volcanic rock, are popular with both Madeirans and visitors, hold a Blue Flag and are watched by lifeguards through the year. In 2018 CNN listed them among its 52 best beaches in the world, one for each week of the year.

The Centro Ciência Viva, created by the regional government, presents the laurisilva, the laurel forest that now covers 16 per cent of Madeira and is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It has an auditorium for 120 people and a space for the work of local artists, and it works with schools across the region.

Religious life centres on the parish church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, built in the 18th century. Outside the summer season the community is small and quiet, made up largely of farming families in a corner of the island far from Funchal.

The municipality had 2,528 people in 2023, spread across four parishes over about 83 square kilometres; the parish of Porto Moniz itself counted 1,584 residents at the 2021 census. Seixal is the largest parish by area and Achadas da Cruz the smallest in both area and population. At the 2011 census the parish of Porto Moniz had 1,668 people, Seixal 656, Ribeira da Janela 228 and Achadas da Cruz just 159. The municipality borders São Vicente to the east and Calheta to the south and south-west, and its whole northern edge is Atlantic coast.

Farming remains the main activity of the parish, alongside the visitors drawn by the pools. The parish of Porto Moniz covers 21 square kilometres, while Seixal, the largest, covers 36.37.

Life runs at a slow pace. The village lies south-east of Ponta do Tristão, the northernmost point of the island, and the main road that circles Madeira links the municipality with Calheta and Funchal.

Porto Moniz eats as the rest of Madeira does. Espetada — cubes of beef seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and bay leaf and grilled on bay laurel skewers — is the island's best-known dish, served with bolo do caco, a round flatbread traditionally cooked on a flat basalt slab called a caco, and often with milho frito, fried cornmeal cut into cubes, similar to a very firm polenta.

Fish is central to Madeiran cooking. Espada com banana, a traditional dish of the archipelago, is black scabbardfish fried in batter or breadcrumbs and served with fried banana, and fresh tuna is widely eaten in Madeira.

The island's drink is poncha, made with aguardente de cana — a spirit distilled from sugar-cane juice — with honey, sugar and orange or lemon juice. For dessert there is bolo de mel, the "honey cake", traditionally made with molasses, which by custom is torn by hand rather than cut.