José Ruivinho Brazão

Professor and philologist. He studied at the Seminary of São José de Faro, completing his theological course in 1959 at the Seminary of Cristo Rei dos Olivais. The following year, he began his teaching career at the Escola Técnica de Silves, later transferring to Lisbon, where he taught in colleges and preparatory schools. In 1977-1978, he completed his degree in Classical Philology at the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon, through which he promoted and energized meetings with popular Algarve poets, resulting in fruitful research on the language of maritime work on Quarteira beach. He then met Manuel de Brito Pardal, the poet-fisherman, whose work he collected, selected, and presented in a book that remains a reference title in the oral and popular literature of the Algarve. Wherever he went, he distinguished himself through inter-school networking activities, the founding of the Clube Poesia e Vida at the Pedro Nunes School in Lisbon, and, above all, through the dissemination of popular culture and Algarve literature in various conferences delivered at sociocultural institutions. His teaching career began in Lisbon, eventually returning to the Algarve in 1992-1993, specifically to the former Liceu de Faro and Escola Secundária de Albufeira, where he would retire in 1997. He also found time to complete a master's degree in Portuguese Literature at the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon, whose dissertation, «Os Provérbios nos Cancioneiros Medievais Galego-Portugueses,» awaits publication. He developed a pilot research project in the field of traditional popular literature and culture of the Algarve, supported by the Ministry of Culture, in which several secondary school teachers have collaborated, materialized in the publication of his book on Algarve proverbs. He currently teaches at the University for the Third Age in Albufeira. His work consists of the collection, selection, and presentation of books by Manuel Pardal, Em Cima do Mar Salgado (1977); Clementino Baeta, Sonhos de Emigrante (1990); and Martinho Bexiga, Meus Versos Quem os Entende (1993). Of his own authorship, he only published the work Os Provérbios Estão Vivos no Algarve: Pesquisa Paremiológica em Paderne, 1998, whose collection was compiled by Dulcelina Maria Coelho da Silva, Maria Isabel de Oliveira Lima, and Maria Solange Castro e Brito.