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Why Didn’t the Islands of Flores and Corvo Belong to the Azores Archipelago?

While almost all the islands of the present-day Azores archipelago were discovered by Portuguese navigators in the first half of the 15th century, the islands of Flores and Corvo, located further west, were discovered by the Portuguese pilot Diogo de Teive in 1452. They eventually came to be recognized as a distinct geographical and administrative unit, a situation that persisted for some time. So much so that, in 1495, when King Manuel I of Portugal ascended the throne and the position of donatary was abolished—bringing all the islands under direct control of the Crown—an exception was maintained for the westernmost islands, which were still uninhabited. These islands continued to have their own donatary and were not included in the Azorean archipelago.

Thus, Gaspar Frutuoso wrote in his "Saudades da Terra" that among all seven islands of the Azores, none had better soil. A little later, Friar Agostinho de Montalverne referred to São Miguel as one of the seven Azorean islands, and when speaking about Graciosa, he stated that it was the last of the seven islands to be discovered. By the 18th century, the friar Manuel de São Luís categorically affirmed that, among all the seven islands commonly called the Azores, São Miguel was the principal one.

Likewise, cartography reflected this distinction, this duality, which positioned the western islands as separate from the central axis of the archipelago. This was evident in terms such as Ilhas Terceiras (a reference to the importance of Terceira Island and the city of Angra do Heroísmo within the archipelago), as opposed to the Ilhas Floreiras (Flores and Corvo).

As historian José Damião Rodrigues highlighted, the geographical scale of the archipelago, the fragmentation and distance between islands or island groups, and the existence of two distinct administrative realities—“the islands of a lord” (Flores and Corvo) versus “the islands of the king” (the rest)—led to the exclusion of Flores and Corvo from the general designation of Azores. This perception of the archipelago’s geographical reality, in which two islands were excluded, persisted until the 18th century, albeit with some exceptions.

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