Olinda the Carnival Capital of North East Brazil joins the Minha Casa Minha Vida programme

Towards the tip of Brazil, on the part jutting out towards Africa is the old colonial city of Olinda. This colourful city, renowned for it's carnivals is to finally join the popular Minha Casa Mminha Vida (my house my life) affordable housing programme, a move welcomed by locals and official alike.

Olinda is in the State of Pernambuco and is one of the largest cities in that region of the Atlantic coast. The city is south of Paulista but is to the north of nearby Recife. It's well known as a historical site, indeed one of the most well preserved in the whole country. Nowadays the city and its surrounding area have a population of about four hundred thousand. This is rather more than some English cities (for instance Nottingham or Leicester) or indeed some US places like Providence, Rhode Island which is only half Olinda's size. Incidentally, for fans of ‘Game of Thrones' the fictional city of King's Landing is quoted as having 400,000 residents...same as Olinda !

The main downtown area of Olinda is a well-preserved historical district which nowadays is a UNESCO World Heritage site which is recognised internationally. Throughout Brazil there are less than twenty such sites out of about a thousand in the entire world. An important part of Olinda cultural life is the Carnival. This is a kind of exuberant street party with music and dances, many of which showing elements of either Portuguese or African influences. There are large numbers of individual groups or performers. All with their own particular contribution. An important difference between the Olinda Carnival and the one, for instance, in Rio is that the Olinda event is completely free. There are no charges for any of the events and no areas of the streets are roped off or restricted. Many thousands of people visit the carnival from all over Brazil and further afield and the event is of great importance to the local economy.

The history of the area dates back thousands of years, most of that time featuring competing and often warring local tribes. The first Europeans to penetrate the area are believed to be French adventurers but the first really organised incursion was from the Portuguese who built a fort on a local hill and successfully dominated the area by playing off the local tribes against each other. The first permanent civilian settlement was founded by Duarte Coelho Pereira in 1535 and the growing town became the headquarters of the diocese about a century later. In the mid seventeenth century the area was invaded and occupied by the Dutch ( as were some of the African possessions) and in 1631 the town was sacked and burned by the Dutch army who (among other things) burned all the local Catholic churches as an expression of their Calvinist zeal. However the balance eventually tilted the other way again but it was not until 1640 that Portugal started to reclaim its lost colonies in Brazil and elsewhere.

The local economy currently depends on the service and tourism sectors which together account for over eighty percent of the Olinda area GDP. Manufacturing does exist but is mostly fairly small scale and rooted in the arts and crafts for which Olinda is well known. Joining the government funded Minha Casa Minha Vida housing programme will now also bring foreign property investors to the city keen to invest in Brazil and to get in of the safest and most profitable Real Estate Investment currently available.