Members of these communities provided most of the labor that built and expanded the cocoa farming industry on Fernando Pó during the 1880s and 1890s.
This group consisted of mulattoes of black female Bubi and white male Spanish parentage, and were part of the emancipados social class.
Similarly, the Portuguese-Indigenous descended mulatto population of São Tomé and Príncipe, an island also discovered by explorer Fernão do Pó, were also referred to as Fernandinos, at one point.
Native Fernandinos spoke Equatoguinean Spanish, French, Bube and a form of pidgin English called Pichinglis.
Essentially, Krios are descendants of blacks who were resettled from London, the Caribbean and Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
As English speakers with some Anglo culture, they became a dominant force in the evolution of local society and economy and took on leadership roles.
The Krios joined an influx of several hundred freed Creole African-descended immigrants from Cape Coast and other groups from British colonies in Africa.
The first inhabitants purchased dwellings for $3,000 to $5,000, along with a handful of large plantation owners who had engaged in the cocoa and yam farming industry.
[3] The group is closely related to other West African Creole communities in Freetown, Cape Coast and Lagos.
Endogamy was a common marriage practice, and families aligned themselves in order to maintain, and increase, property ownership as well as social and business alliances outside of the island.
However, by the late-1800s, as Spanish cultural and religious influence grew on the island, Krio Fernandinos found that exclusively marrying into their traditional identity became less practical for political and economic survival.
Although they comprise a distinct ethnic group in Equatorial Guinea, their pidgin dialect is spoken in only six communities (Musola, Las Palmas, Sampaca, Basupu, Fiston and Balueri de Cristo Rey / Bottle Nose).