The Tuna Route

28 June | 10 am - 12 am
Tavira | Pedras Del Rei, Santa Luzia
https://maps.app.goo.gl/eTE5ZtZnaGeVFUcz7

Host Brígida Baptista - Lais de Guia | PT
Max participants: 12

Please wear comfortable clothing and footwear and bring water and a cap or hat

For thousands of years, the Algarve coast was one of the main migratory routes of the great tuna shoals — an aquatic odyssey that profoundly shaped the lives, economy, and identity of the region’s coastal communities.

In this experience, tuna serves as the thread connecting a journey through time. Beyond its biology and behaviour, we explore the historical, political, social, and economic significance of a species that played a defining role in the Algarve’s development.

The visit is led by a researcher and historian specialising in tuna fishing in the Algarve and is enriched by the presence of relatives of fishermen who worked in the former tuna trap fishery. Their living testimonies bring history into the present with an authenticity that no book can replicate.

Following the Christian Reconquest from the 13th century onwards, tuna fishing became a royal privilege — a right reserved to the Crown for more than six centuries, until 1830. After its abolition, the first private companies and enterprises emerged to manage the Algarve’s tuna fisheries, dominating the sector until the 1970s.

At the heart of this story is the Três Irmãos Tuna Fishery, also known as the Barril Tuna Fishery, one of the most iconic tuna fishing sites on the Algarve coast. Operating at Barril Beach between 1841 and 1966, it left behind a remarkable legacy. The tour includes a visit to Portugal’s oldest preserved tuna fishing settlement, a rare and unique testimony to a way of life that has endured through time and can still be felt here today, almost untouched.

Through this place, its memories, and the people connected to it, we give a human face to history — the story of a community that lived by the sea and with the sea.

Free admission. Limited capacity. Advance registration required.
Each participant may register for only one tour. Registration is open until 10pm on June 22. 
If you wish to cancel, please contact us.