Azinhaga do Ribatejo or simply Azinhaga () is a village and a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Golegã Golegã () is a town and municipality in Santarém District, Portugal. The population of the municipality in 2011 was 5,913,including the parish Pombalinho, that changed from the municipality of Santarém to Golegã in 2013 in an area of 84.32 ...

Santarém District The District of Santarém ( pt, Distrito de Santarém ) is a district of Portugal, located in Portugal's ''Centro Region''. The district capital is the city of Santarém. The district is the 3rd largest in Portugal, with an area of , and a pop ...

Lezíria do Tejo The Comunidade Intermunicipal da Lezíria do Tejo (; English: ''Tagus Floodplain'') is an administrative division in Portugal. It was established as an ''Associação de Municípios'' in 1987, converted into a ''Comunidade Urbana'' in 2003, and co ...

(roughly the same territory of the historical province of

Ribatejo The Ribatejo () is the most central of the traditional provinces of Portugal, with no coastline or border with Spain. The region is crossed by the Tagus river (''Ribatejo'' translates to "upper Tagus", or more precisely, "up the Tagus" relative ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. The population of Azinhaga civil parish in 2011 was 1,620,Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)
Census 2011 results according to the 2013 administrative division of Portugal in an area of 38.21 km².

History

Azinhaga was the birthplace of the 1998

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

-winning author

José Saramago José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE ComSE GColCa (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony ith which heco ...

(born in 1922) who in

Memories of My Youth ''Memories of my Youth'' (''Small Memories'') is an autobiography by Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago. It was first published in 2006. A memoir of Saramago's childhood in Portugal that moves between Lisbon and Azinhaga Azinhaga do Rib ...

(first published in 2006) gave a detailed account in words of Azinhaga in the first half of the 20th century. In 1938, Azinhaga won the title of

's Most Portuguese Village, awarded by the Portuguese Secretariat for Propaganda under the Estado Novo regime (at the same government-sponsored competition, Monsanto, in Idanha-a-Nova, won the title of Portugal's Most Portuguese Village). From the mid-1940s to the 1980s, Azinhaga was the site of a nationally-renowned

tomato paste Tomato paste is a thick paste made by cooking tomatoes for several hours to reduce the water content, straining out the seeds and skins, and cooking the liquid again to reduce the base to a thick, rich concentrate. It is used to impart an intens ...

factory - the ''Sociedade Industrial de Concentrados'' (SIC). Like many other previously successful Portuguese exporters (i.e. CUF and others), it didn't survive the

far-left politics Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars consider ...

labor movement The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...

-inspired PREC (1975) and its influence over Portuguese economy, society and government policies. In the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, Azinhaga benefited from

European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds The European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds, ESIFs) are financial tools governed by a common rulebook, set up to implement the regional policy of the European Union, as well as the structural policy pillars of the Common Agricultural ...

. Several amenities were built, expanded or modernized during this period, from comprehensive asphalt road and sewer system, to new education and sports infrastructure.

Geography

The population of Azinhaga civil parish in 2011 was 1,620,Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)
Census 2011 results according to the 2013 administrative division of Portugal in an area of 38.21 km². The village of Azinhaga is located along the right bank of the river Almonda which is itself near the right bank of the

Tagus River The Tagus ( ; es, Tajo ; pt, Tejo ; see below) is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. The river rises in the Montes Universales near Teruel, in mid-eastern Spain, flows , generally west with two main south-westward sections, to e ...

, in a large

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

renowned for its high-yield

farmland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

. The village proper is about 18 to 20 meters high above sea level. Azinhaga is about 28 kilometers away by road from the district capital, the city of Santarém, and the seat of the

, the town of

, is about 8 kilometers to the northeast.

Economy

Besides a number of small retail stores and local shops, as well as

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

and

animal husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starti ...

-related activities, Azinhaga has municipal

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...

tennis court A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...

kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...

and

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

; the offices of Azinhaga civil parish local government (''

freguesia ''Freguesia'' (), usually translated as "parish" or "civil parish", is the third-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution. It is also the designation for local government jurisdictions in the former Port ...

'', the third layer of official administrative authority in Portugal), local state-run

healthcare center A healthcare center, health center, or community health center is one of a network of clinics staffed by a group of general practitioners and nurses providing healthcare services to people in a certain area. Typical services covered are family pr ...

of the Portuguese National Health Service; a local branch of the

Santa Casa da Misericórdia Santa Casa da Misericórdia is a lay Portuguese charity founded in 1498, whose mission is to treat and support the sick, the disabled, as well as abandoned newborns. History The institution traces its official foundation to 1498, when Queen ...

charity and the local branch of the

José Saramago Foundation The José Saramago Foundation is a Cultural institutions, cultural private institution located in the Casa dos Bicos, in Lisbon (Portugal). A smaller branch has been opened in Azinhaga, Azinhaga do Ribatejo, home village of José Saramago, the Po ...

which has its headquarters based in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

and includes a library.José Saramago Foundation https://www.josesaramago.org/onde-estamos/ Azinhaga is served by the

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

of Mato de Miranda. The main agricultural productions are

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

and ''

Beta vulgaris ''Beta vulgaris'' (beet) is a species of flowering plant in the subfamily Betoideae of the family Amaranthaceae. Economically, it is the most important crop of the large order Caryophyllales. It has several cultivar groups: the sugar beet, of gre ...

''. It is in an area which is a reputed animal producing center and an internationally renowned

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...

and

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

market.

References

External links

Freguesia De Azinhaga
(Official)
Azinhaga.net
{{authority control Freguesias of Golegã