Florianópolis

Florianopolis is the capital of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, in the southern region of the country. The municipality is made up of the main island, the island of Santa Catarina, the mainland, and some small surrounding islands. The city has a population of 516,524 inhabitants, according to estimates for 2021 from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). It is the second most populous municipality in the state (after Joinville) and number 48 in Brazil. The metropolitan region has an estimated population of one million two hundred thousand residents, being the twenty-first largest city in Brazil. The city is known for having a high quality of life, being the Brazilian capital with the highest score in the Human Development Index (HDI), calculated by the UNDP of the United Nations. Florianópolis' economy is largely based on information technology, tourism and services. The city has more than 100 registered beaches and is a center of nautical activity. The New York Times considered in 2009 that: "Florianópolis was the destination of the year". Newsweek named the county one of the "World's Ten Most Dynamic Cities" in 2006. The 2014 Entrepreneurial Cities Index (ICE), produced by the Brazilian branch of the North American NGO Endeavor, chose the city as the best environment for entrepreneurship in the country. The city was also considered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) one of the "creative cities" of Brazil in 2014, along with Curitiba. Most of the population lives on the mainland and in the central and northern parts of the main island. The southern half is less inhabited. Many small commercial fishermen populate the island. Fishing boats, lacemakers, folklore, gastronomy and colonial architecture contribute to the growth of tourism and attract resources that make up for the lack of a large industrial park. Towns steeped in tradition and history, such as Santo Antônio de Lisboa and Ribeirão da Ilha, still resist the advances of modernity. Hercílio Luz International Airport serves the city. Florianópolis is home to the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), as well as two campuses of the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina and two campuses of the State University of Santa Catarina, among other higher and professional education institutions. Archaeological remains have been found on the island of Santa Catarina, which proves that it was inhabited in ancient times. There are indications of the presence of the so-called Man of Sambaqui in archaeological sites whose oldest records date back to 4800 BC. The island has numerous cave inscriptions and some stone drawings, standing out in several of its beaches. Around the year 1000, the Tapuia indigenous peoples that inhabited the region were expelled towards the interior of the continent due to the arrival of peoples of the Tupi linguistic stock coming from the Amazon. At the beginning of the 16th century, ships destined for the Rio de la Plata Basin made a stopover on the island of Santa Catarina to stock up on water and food. However, it was only around 1673 that pioneer Francisco Dias Velho, along with his family and other members, began to populate the island with the founding of Nossa Senhora do Desterro (now Florianópolis), the second oldest settlement in the state, still being part of the town of Laguna, playing an important political role in the colonization of the region. From the middle of the 18th century, the island of Santa Catarina began to receive a significant number of Azorean immigrants, who arrived in Brazil encouraged by the Portuguese Crown to alleviate the excess population and occupy the southern part of their colony in South America. With migration, agriculture and the manufacturing industry of cotton and linen prospered, leaving, even today, traces of that past, in regard to the artisanal production of cassava flour and bobbin lace.