São Vicente: the north coast with a town attached

What is actually in the town

Centro de Saúde de São Vicente, on Estrada D. João V at Feiteiras, 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 — a genuinely important fact on this side of the mountain, because the region’s only twenty-four-hour hospital emergency department is in Funchal, on the other side of it.

There is a Continente Modelo on Estrada Dom João V. Neither chain lists a Pingo Doce here, and Lidl has no store anywhere in the archipelago. Schooling runs from a primary with pre-school at Sítio do Poiso to Escola Básica e Secundária D. Lucinda Andrade.

Buses run to Funchal by two different roads: the expressway routes and the slower Estrada Regional routes, plus three local services. Every route number in Madeira changed to three digits on 9 March 2026, and some old numbers now belong to a different route entirely, so nothing published before that date should be relied on.

The rainfall, and the gap in the record

The São Vicente station has large gaps, and DREM publishes no annual rainfall total for it after 2021. The last complete year on record gave 1,377.9 mm*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 against 861.8 mm*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 at Funchal/Observatório in the same year. That is the honest number available, and it is four years old.

Temperature is better covered: 18.7 °C*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, read August 26, 2026 mean annual air temperature in 2025, warmer than Santana because the station sits near sea level rather than several hundred metres up. The regional water-resources study states the general rule directly — rainfall is higher on the north slope than the south at the same elevation. The full comparison sets out what that costs and what it buys.

Who lives here

São Vicente parish counted 2,788*, source: DREM / INE, 2021, read August 26, 2026 residents at the 2021 census. The municipality fell −15.0%*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 31 December 2025, read August 26, 2026 across the census decade, second only to Santana, and DREM estimates it at 5,027*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 31 December 2025, read August 26, 2026 at the end of 2025. It has the second-lowest population density of any Madeiran municipality, 61.7 per km²*, source: DREM — Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, 2021, read August 26, 2026.

The direction has changed recently: the municipality recorded the region’s highest migration-driven growth in 2024. What it has not changed is the underlying arithmetic — a small population, spread thinly, a long way from the hospital.

The drive

Modelled at free-flow speed, Funchal is 38 minutes*, source: OSRM over OpenStreetMap data, read August 26, 2026 and the airport 51 minutes*, source: OSRM over OpenStreetMap data, read August 28, 2026. Both go through the mountain rather than over it, which is why they are as short as they are.

These are routing-engine outputs, not measured journeys. They contain no traffic, no roadworks, no fog on the pass and no time behind a bus on the old road. On the north coast that gap between model and reality is wider than it is on the south.

The municipality in its own words

São Vicente gives its area as 78.82 km²*, source: Câmara Municipal de São Vicente, read August 26, 2026 across three parishes — Boaventura, Ponta Delgada and São Vicente — bordered by the Atlantic to the north, Santana to the east, Porto Moniz to the west, and Câmara de Lobos, Ribeira Brava and Ponta do Sol to the south. It attributes its settlement to the abundance of water on this side of the island, with early economies built on vines and sugar cane.

The municipality publishes a slightly different population figure from the census table. This page uses the census table, as every population figure on this site does.