The inclusion in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of this festival - marked by a procession in boats that makes the route between Culatra and Olhão - was proposed in 2019

The festival in honour of Our Lady of the Navigators features a procession on the first Sunday of every August, which begins with the removal of the image of the patron saint of the Culatra fishing community from the local chapel to be taken on board a fishing boat, through the Ria Formosa, to Olhão.

At the quay in Olhão, the maritime procession collects the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, the town's patron saint, and begins the return to Culatra, where a procession through the streets of the fishing nucleus and a mass are then held.

Even so, as the event documentation recalls, "one cannot consider the Feast in Honour of Our Lady of the Seafarers to be merely a religious festival when in reality it is an entire cultural manifestation in itself which is also implicit in the broader way in which they consider it - the 'Island Festival'".

Festa da Ilha 2020

The decision now published classifies the most representative festival of the fishing community of Culatra, one of the barrier islands of the Ria Formosa, belonging to the municipality and district of Faro, but linked, by tradition and geographical proximity, to Olhão.

"The Feast in Honour of Our Lady of the Navigators is inseparable from the history of Culatra Island itself and for that reason, to understand one it is necessary to know the other," can be read in the history, available at Matriz PCI.