Santana: the wettest town on this site, by a long way

The rainfall is the story, and it is measured

The Santana station recorded 1,228.4 mm*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 of rain in 2025. Funchal/Observatório recorded 669.7 mm*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 in the same year, and Funchal/Lido 348.5 mm*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026. That is roughly two to three and a half times as much rain, depending which Funchal station is used, measured in the same year by the same regional statistics office.

The frequency matters as much as the total. In 2024 Santana had 140*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 days without precipitation, the fewest of any Madeiran station, and 129*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 days with measurable rain, the most. Mean annual air temperature was 16.2 °C*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 in 2025, which reflects both the northern aspect and the town’s position several hundred metres above the sea. The full north–south comparison puts those numbers alongside the rest of the island.

What is actually in the town

Centro de Saúde de Santana, on Avenida Manuel Marques da Trindade, opens on weekdays and runs a Serviço de Atendimento Urgente twenty-four hours a day, every day. It is one of 9 of 47*, source: SESARAM, read August 26, 2026 SESARAM health centres with an urgência at all. The region’s only twenty-four-hour hospital emergency department is in Funchal, on the far side of the ridge.

There is a Continente Modelo at Sítio do Barreiro. Lidl has no store anywhere in the archipelago. Schooling is unusually convenient: Escola Básica e Secundária com Pré-escolar e Creche Bispo D. Manuel Ferreira Cabral covers creche to secondary in one establishment, so a family here does not change school buildings as children age.

Buses run on the Funchal–Santana trunk route plus services to Porto da Cruz and two local circuits. All Madeiran route numbers changed to a three-digit scheme on 9 March 2026, so older lists are unreliable.

Who lives here, and who has left

Santana parish counted 2,838*, source: DREM / INE, 2021, read August 26, 2026 residents at the 2021 census. The municipality fell −15.1%*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 2021, read August 26, 2026 across the census decade, the steepest fall of any Madeiran municipality, and DREM estimates it at 6,643*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 31 December 2025, read August 26, 2026 at the end of 2025, with a density of 69.6 per km²*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 31 December 2025, read August 26, 2026.

The number a buyer should look at hardest is a different one. Vacant dwellings in Santana grew +80.6%*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 2021, read August 26, 2026 between the two censuses, the steepest increase in the region. Its ageing index, 306.2*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 31 December 2025, read August 26, 2026, is the second oldest municipal profile in the region. Neither figure is a forecast about resale, and this site does not make forecasts — but they are the published context in which a purchase here happens.

The Biosphere Reserve, and the thatched houses

UNESCO classified Santana as a Biosphere Reserve under the Man and the Biosphere programme on 29 June 2011. The reserve covers the entire land area of the municipality plus the adjacent sea out to the two-hundred-metre isobath. No area figure is published for it — the reserve is defined by boundary, not by size, and none is invented here.

The thatched houses are officially casas de colmo, and the official description gives three roof forms: casas de empena ou de fio, de meio-fio and de quatro águas. The four-sided type, often called casas redondas, was built mainly in São Jorge parish. The municipality has planted wheat and rye on abandoned farmland to keep a supply of thatch. The word triangular, which is the common tourist description, does not appear in the official text.

The drive, and the altitude question

Modelled at free-flow speed over OpenStreetMap data, Funchal is 42 minutes*, source: OSRM over OpenStreetMap data, read August 26, 2026 and the airport 24 minutes*, source: OSRM over OpenStreetMap data, read August 28, 2026. The airport is closer than the capital from here, and that reverses the usual assumption about the north coast.

On altitude the sources differ and both are recorded. The municipality gives the concelho an altitude of about 312 m*, source: Santana Madeira Biosfera (Câmara Municipal de Santana), read August 26, 2026; the elevation model samples the town centre point at 426 m*, source: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 via the Open-Meteo elevation API, read August 26, 2026. The model figure describes ground within a few hundred metres of the centre, not the parish, which runs from the sea to the ridge like most of the island.