History of Sacavém
It is believed that the medieval tower of Sacavém de Cima, located in Largo do Terreirinho, in front of the Chapel of Our Lady of Health, in the historic center of the town, has Muslim origins and it would be there where, according to tradition, the Christians paid the yizia to the Moorish authorities.
Throughout the Emirate and Caliphate domination, several seditions against the Umayyads took place in Ġarb al- ndalus (where it was included, as previously explained, Sacavém), highlighting the revolt promoted by the Banu Marwan of Mérida/Badajoz or that of Umar ibn Hafsun, of Bobastro, put down in the late 20s of the 10th century (in fact, during the second half of the 9th century and until January 929, date in which 'Abd al-Raḥman III proclaims himself Amir al-Mu'minin (Prince of the Believers), that is, Caliph —precisely after defeating the Banu Marwan—, passing into a period of greater weakness of the central power, the Gharb was only nominally part of the Umayyad emirate, having become a sort of autonomous principality with headquarters in Batalyaws, that is, Badajoz).
The Leonese dominion was short-lived: in 1095, in the face of the inexorable advance of the Almoravid troops led by Yusuf ibn Tašfin, Count Raymond of Burgundy was defeated and the border passed from the Tagus to the Mondego River, returning Sacavém to Muslim hands.
Maria Meiouchi, muytas uegadas Pero d'Anbroã ach end eu mal, mays sé té colhé d el logar atal com andas tu assy pelas pousadas, Marinha Meiouchi, a mui gram sazon, Pero d'Anbroã, se th achar enton, gram med ey que ti querra fazer mal.According to Machado, the locution Çaca dé Uen (read Saca dé Ven) would be a derivation of Sacavém, proposing the French origin of the term, a hypothesis generally preferred to the Arabic theory.
Also in the same chronicle, Fernão Lopes states that, during the third Fernandine war (1381-1382), an English squadron destined to help the Portuguese king in his pretensions to the throne of Castile, anchored in the Tagus along Lisbon; Despite this, its commander the Earl of Cambridge Edmund of Langley (future Duke of York, son of Edward III and brother of John of Gaunt), warned of the eminence of the arrival of a Castilian fleet coming from Seville and commanded by Admiral Fernando Sanchez de Tovar, decided to lead his navy to a safe harbor, having agreed with D. Fernando with him "que era bem que aquela frota e outros navios que hi jaziam, que se fossem todos a Sacavem, que som duas legoas da cidade, e ali se lançassem todos por jazerem seguros" (that it was best that that fleet and other ships that were there should go to Sacavém, which is two leagues from the city and there they should all join together to be safer).
Fernão Lopes again mentions the locality in the Crónica del-rei D. João I, in the context of the crisis of 1383-1385 and the siege that the Castilians imposed on Lisbon in 1384:"A boat in which Gonçalo Gonçalves Borjas was riding, decided to march towards Restelo, and the contrary wind carried it by force on the road to Sacavém.
"[32]Despite belonging to the patrimony of Leonor Téllez, Sacavém was positioned in favor of John I, being as a reward subtracted (along with Unhos, Frielas and Camarate) from the Queen's House, and reintegrated into the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the Lisbon District, on May 4, 1384; on April 7, 1385, one day after his election as King in the Cortes of Coímbra, D. John I handed over the realengos of Sacavém, Camarate, Frielas and Unhos to the Constable of the Kingdom D. Nun'Álvares Pereira, with all its terms, salt mines, and other rights, leaving this patrimony ascribed to the assets of the County of Ourém, to which Nun'Álvares had acceded by grace of the king.
Meanwhile, in May 1393, according to the Crónica do Condestabre de Portugal, the Constable proceeded to a distribution of benefits and lands to the knights who had helped in the war against Castile and in the service of the Master of Avis, ceding their usufruct, although he kept the bare ownership of them.
In the chronicles of Rui de Pina and Duarte Nunes do Leão, there are allusions to Sacavém, the latter affirming that the royal family withdrew to this town when an outbreak of plague began in the capital, in 1415, on the eve of the Conquest of Ceuta.
This situation continued until the beginning of September, the last letter signed by the two (in the neighboring town of Camarate, where he ended up settling for some time, due to the greater proximity to Sacavém), before the prince Pedro left for his stately palace in Tentúgal.
The queen remained in Sacavém until September 25, when she moved to Alenquer; Rui de Pina wrote about this fact that "a Raynha se partió com ElRey e seus filhos e sua Casa pera Alanquer, muyto revosa dos movimentos e alvoroços de Lixboa, e pouco segura em Sacavem onde estaba, por ser Aldea fraca e tam perto da Cidade" (The queen left with the king and his children and his house to Alenquer, far away from the movements and disturbances of Lisbon and not very safe in Sacavém for being a small village near the city).
Between 1531 and 1533, during the visit to the Cistercian monasteries in the Iberian Peninsula (in an attempt to moralize the monastic life of the peninsular monks), carried out by the Abbot of Clairvaux Edme de Saulieu, an allusion to Sacavém and its ship appears in the work Peregrinatio Hispanica, written by the also Cistercian Claude de Bronseval, saying in his account, on August 12, 1532, that "exiuit Dominus Vlixbonam et uenit transire barquam a Sacauent et iacere in burgo uocato Poue" (Monsignor left Lisbon and crossed the boat of Sacavém and rested in the burgh called Póvoa [of Santa Iría]).
According to Couto, the whip was taken to the mainland, in Sacavém, and remained there for several years (until it fell to pieces) to be visited by the people who did not believe Botelho's deed; for this reason, Gaspar Correia, in his work Lendas da Índia, reports that the king ordered the boat to be burned so that "não se vulgarizasse a ideia de que era possível fazer a viagem em tão modesto meio" (the idea that it was possible to make the trip in such a modest method would not be vulgarized).
A document is preserved dating from the middle of the reign of John III, which appeared in the royal chancellery, according to which the monarch donated the yield of several localities around Lisbon (Amêndoa, Abrantes, Aldeia Galega da Merceana, Aldeia Galega do Ribatejo, Alhandra, Alhos Vedros, Almada, Alverca, Azeitão, Barcarena, Barreiro, Benfica, Carnide, Cascais, Castanheira, Cheleiros, Coina, Colares, Ericeira, Lavradio, Lumiar, Mafra, Palhais, Ponte de Sor, Povos, Punhete, Sacavém, Santo António do Tojal, Sardoal, Sesimbra, Sintra, Talha, Torrão, Vialonga and Vila Franca), constituting a royal monopoly, to the nuns of the Monastery of Santa Clara in the capital.
After the death of Cardinal Henry I, a council of governors of the kingdom of Portugal, appointed by him, assumes power; the population, wishing not to see the national crown united to Spain, acclaims in Santarém, on July 19, the Prior of Crato D. Antonio as king.
In spite of it, "à passagem do cortejo por Sacavém sucedia o primeiro episóido dramático do seu reinado: um tiro desgarrado, que alguns supunham ser dirigido contra o próprio monarca, foi atingir em cheio o fidalgo D. Francisco de Almeida, que caiu redondamente no chão"[39] (as the cortege passed through Sacavém, the first dramatic episode of his reign occurred: a torn shot, which some suppose to be directed against the monarch himself, was aimed squarely at the nobleman Francisco de Almeida, who fell roundly to the ground).
During that time, when the integration of the Kingdom of Portugal into the Crown of Spain was underway, the potential of Sacavém and its port did not go unnoticed by one of the main Castilian military men sent to Lisbon, Admiral Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz de Mudela, who, in a letter to King Philip II of Spain (preserved in the War and Navy Section of the General Archive of Simancas), states that:«[...] It is not convenient to have the ships in this river of Lisbon because they get damaged and spend more moorings with the stormy weather that other ships win and it would be better to have them in the river of Sacaven, which is two leagues from this city where with two ropes of esparto grass and two men they would be safe and without being damaged, nor with risk of getting lost for not entering there sea that could harm them and have much shelter that the ships they use for being so large cannot enter said river nor would they fail to enter the ports of the Indies and make navigation more in order to be there the summer to negotiate and dispatch without risk.
Meanwhile, with the ruin of the Roman bridge (still referred to in 1570), without ever having been rebuilt, due to the negligence of the rulers, the crossing of people and goods across the river of Sacavém had to be done arduously by boat; the Duke of Bragança, donator of the town and its rights, rented the toll to the boatmen of Trancão in exchange for 300 thousand reais per year.
Years later, in 1629, Miguel Leitão de Andrada prints in his work Miscelânea the apparition of the image of Our Lady of Light of Pedrógão Grande, with many curiosities and diverse poetries, in which he alludes succinctly, in a lively and curious register, then in the first pages of his "2nd.
Also according to Pinho Leal, on December 16, 1741, died in Sacavém one of the longest-lived women in the history of Portugal — a certain Ana da Silva, from Santa Maria dos Olivais, where she was born in January 1626 (being, therefore, 115 years old on the date of her death).
This lady, according to a 19th-century scholar, had been married twice and had left a significant offspring, without ever having undergone bloodletting or purging (which, ironically, may well explain her longevity, at a time when medical care was, in most cases, a major cause of death).
To solve the urban planning problems of the capital and to prevent such a large mortality in the event of an earthquake, the chief engineer of the kingdom, Manuel da Maia, envisaged a solution, including Sacavém and its river valley, in the Terceira parte da Dissertação sobre a renovação de Lisboa (third part of the dissertation on the renovation of Lisbon):"8th - To this consideration of preserving the streets of Lisbon free from the encumbrances that make them filthy, in which the greater width of the streets and lesser height of the buildings, not exceeding two stories above the stores, will participate, follows necessarily another not less important, and consists in determining a better place in which the said encumbrances may be thrown with less inconvenience; and because one occurs to me more free from them than those already observed, and promises great convenience to the public good, to present such a plan in this place.
At the end of the 18th century, Sacavém merited a reference in the sonnet of Bocage, who was not entirely indifferent to the beauty of the locality:«Praias de Sacavém, que Lemnoria, Orna c'os pés nevados e mimosos, Gotejantes penedos cavernosos, Que do Tejo cobris a margem fria.De vós me desarreiga a tiraniaDos ásperos Destinos poderosos, Que não querem que eu logre os amorososOlhos, aonde jaz minha alegria.Oh funesto, oh penoso apartamento!Objecto encantador de meus gemidos, A sorte o manda assim, de ti me ausento.Mas inda lá de longe os meus gemidosGuiados por Amor, cortando o Vento, Virão, ninfa querida, a teus ouvidos.» Beaches of Sacavém, that Lemnoria, Adorns with snowy and cuddly feet, Dripping cavernous crags, That of the Tagus you cover the cold margin.From you I am uprooted by the tyrannyOf the harsh powerful Fates, That do not want me to attain the lovingEyes, where my joy lies.O dismal, O pitiful apartment!Lovely object of my groans, Fate so commands, from thee I absent myself.But going there from afar my groansGuided by Love, cutting the Wind, Shall go, dear nymph, to thine ears.In the 19th century Sacavém gained importance due to the constant geo-demographic growth of Lisbon.
Finally, on October 12, 1833, part of the forces of Miguel I, after being expelled from Lisbon by the Duke of Saldanha and defeated in a brief encounter near Loures, went to Sacavém, in order to take the road to Santarém, towards where they were fleeing; after crossing the Trancão, they set fire to the wooden bridge that connected the two banks and that had been rebuilt shortly after the earthquake of 1755.
The new municipal executive had to deal with the problems of a vast council, in a time of great economic, social and legal changes, and it is not surprising, therefore, that among the vast correspondence exchanged, there is a request from the parish council of Sacavém, asking the chamber to appoint a guard to watch over the cemetery of the town, because it was "'devassado e profanado por animais em consequência de se não achar devidamente preparado" (devastated and profaned by animals as a result of not being properly prepared), a fact that led to the situation that, in violation of the laws approved a few years earlier regarding burials in cemeteries, people continued "n'aquela paróquia, com detrimento da saúde pública" (in that parish, to the detriment of public health), burying the deceased in the churches.
The future first Marquise of Rio Maior (Maria Isabel de Lemos), who was only fifteen years old at the time, wrote in her diary a reference to the inauguration and to the (not very honorable) passage of the train through the town — in fact, the locomotive was losing wagons along the way:"Some, of guests, in Olivais.
The situation of political instability throughout the 16 years of the republic led to the revolution of the National Movement of May 28, 1926, which began in Braga under the leadership of General Gomes da Costa and was later seconded in Lisbon by Commander Mendes Cabeçadas.
Monteiro Pereira, the administrator of the factory, was assassinated outside his house in Almada, by a burst of machine gun fire, in an attack perpetrated by the terrorist group Forças Populares; this led to the decree of its illegalization in the 1990s, as well as the sale of its assets at public auction.
On December 1, 2001, Prior Filinto Armalo died in tragic conditions, due to a fire that broke out in his residence (next to the Main Church); in spite of the rapid intervention of the firemen it was not possible to rescue his body alive.
At the end of 2003, a new scandal brought the name of the town to the front pages of the media, with the judicial police investigating the smuggling of land between the management of the Sacavém volunteer fire department and the businessman Sousa Cintra (son of the former president of Sporting Clube de Portugal with the same surname).
