The Sotavento Islands (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

: ''Ilhas de Sotavento'', literally, the ''

Leeward Windward () and leeward () are terms used to describe the direction of the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e. towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point of reference ...

Islands'') is the southern island group of the

Cape Verde , national_anthem = () , official_languages = Portuguese , national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole , capital = Praia , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , demonym ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

.Valor simbólico do centro histórico da Praia
Lourenço Conceição Gomes, Universidade Portucalense, 2008, p. 58-59 There are four main islands. The western three islands,

Brava Brava or La Brava may refer to: Geography *Brava, Cape Verde, a volcanic island *Brava, Costa Rica, an island of Costa Rica (Isla Brava) *Costa Brava, a coastal area Mediterranean of northeast Spain * Barawa, a town in Somalia commonly known as ' ...

, Fogo and

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

, are rocky and

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

islands, with the longest histories of human habitation. The fourth and easternmost island Maio is a flat

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

island whose economy was primarily based on

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

, giving it more in common with the

Barlavento islands The Barlavento Islands ( Portuguese: ''Ilhas de Barlavento'', literally, the ''Windward Islands'') is the northern group of the Cape Verde archipelago.Sal and Boa Vista. The

Ilhéus do Rombo The Ilhéus do Rombo, also known as the Ilhéus Secos (Portuguese for "Dry Islets", because of their aridity and paucity of vegetation), are a group of small, uninhabited islands in the Cape Verde archipelago, lying off the coast of north-west A ...

are barren islets north of Brava. The total area of the Sotavento Islands is .

References

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See also

References