madeira archipelago news

If what you expect from Madeira is elderly snoozers and peasants, you are tragically out of date. Madeira is now one of the most fascinating destinations in Europe. It has a rich seafaring past, superb resorts, wistful villages and towns, and a landscape wreathed in flowers, vineyards and banana trees. Four decades of dictatorship sidelined the island from modern progress and Europe’s power centres, but it has spent much of the last 20 years trying to move in from the periphery, forging new ties with the rest of Europe, restructuring its economy, and struggling to maintain what is best in its national culture despite the sudden onslaught of international influences. The struggle between the traditional and the modern continues, and Madeira flows towards the economic mainstream of the European Union, it still seems to gaze nostalgically over its shoulder and out to sea.