Câmara de Lobos

Câmara de Lobos is a municipality, parish and town in the south-central coast of the island of Madeira. Technically a suburb of the much larger capital city of Funchal, it is one of the larger population centres and an extension of the Funchal economy.HistoryThe location of the modern town is believed to be the original landing point for the Portuguese discoverer João Gonçalves Zarco, who is credited with the discovery of the Madeira Islands. When the explorer disembarked in this area (1419), he observed a narrow rocky peninsula that extended into the ocean, and another nearby that formed an amphitheatre-like harbour that could shelter ships from Atlantic storms. There, Zarco and his men also found a large colony of marine animals that would become the reason for naming this area Câmara de Lobos.The name, lobos, is a Portuguese derivation for sea-lions (lobos-marinhos), which were the animals discovered by Zarco and his men in the sheltered bay. Because of the large colony of these animals, the area was christened câmara dos lobos. This was a pejorative term, since câmara is the Portuguese word for municipal chamber (sometimes erroneously referred to as the town hall or town council), and the sailors named the area, literally as, the Municipal chamber of sea-lions. Today, the species of monk seals are rare, being an animal common to the Mediterranean, but today confined to a small colony on the Desertas Islands.The municipality was created by ministerial decree on 25 May 1835, and invested its executive on 4 October 1835. Initially, this administrative division included the parishes of Câmara de Lobos, Curral das Freiras, Estreito de Câmara de Lobos and Campanário, all districts of Funchal. With many alterations, the newly constituted municipality of Câmara de Lobos operated with those parishes as its core, until Quinta Grande was constituted from sites in the parishes of Campanário and Câmara de Lobos, but maintaining its total area. On 6 May 1914, Campanário is deannexed to the newly created municipality of Ribeira Brava, and on 5 July 1996, the parish of Jardim da Serra was constituted from the higher localities of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos.