A talk by Peter Kingdon Booker

(President of the Algarve History Association)

Always a tuna fishing coast, the Algarve had preserved its catch in salt. The advent of new means for preservation of food in tins in the second half of the 19th century saw a massive swing towards canning. The change began in Vila Real de Santo António and spread along the coast as far as Lagos. In the 1960s and 1970s, this phenomenon disappeared as quickly as it had arrived as a result of the decline in tuna catches and the advent of industrial scale freezing. The skeletons of the industry in the major towns of the Algarve demonstrate that in its time, canning was perhaps the major industry of the Algarve. Join Peter Booker for an examination of the impact of canning on the Algarve.

Casa Ramirez (Canning Magnate) in Vila Real de Santo António