[1] The King of Portugal, Dom Jose I, worried about possible foreign raids on the Brazilian coast, commanded that villages and towns be established in more suitable locations to the projecting or dispersed small farms where the conditions were favourable.

On 13 May 1768, Dom Luis granted the royal charter requested by the founder of the new town which consisted of the creation and maintenance of a church.

Dom Luis, on 23 January 1770, commanded his assistant lieutenant-colonel Alfonso Botelho de Sampaio e Sousa, who erected in village the small farm called Guaratuba, where there were already houses and other buildings.

On the 28th day of that month, the church was blessed and on the 29th the village of São Luís de Guaratuba was formally named.

The councillors thenceforth guided the fortunes citizens of Guaratuba, subject to the authority of the provincial governor (up to 1854 Paraná belonged to the province of São Paulo), until the declaration of the republic, when a new political system canme into effect.

This name was conceived by the natives who inhabited this region at the time of the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese people.

Guará is the name of a bird of red plumage that existed in abundance in this area and even though protected by the authorities, they became extinct.

[3] It also contains about 67% of the 49,287 hectares (121,790 acres) Guaricana National Park, created in 2014 to protect a mountainous area of Atlantic Forest.

The city is situated in a peninsular, arenaceous plain, facing the bay at the Northwest, and another front in the Atlantic Ocean at the Southeast.

Guaratuba has fertile lands where maize, sugar cane, rice, oranges, ginger and bananas, and many other products are of great economic importance.