Public holidays on Pico

Three layers of holiday

A day off on Pico can come from three places: the national calendar, the Azores' own regional holiday, and the municipality you happen to be standing in. The island has three municipalities, so a holiday in one town can be a normal working day in the next one along the coast.

National holidays

Portugal's mandatory holidays are set by article 234 of the Labour Code, the Código do Trabalho: 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, 25 April, 1 May, Corpus Christi, 10 June, 15 August, 5 October, 1 November, and 1, 8 and 25 December. Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Corpus Christi move with Easter every year; the rest are fixed dates. The same article allows Good Friday to be observed on another day with local meaning in the Easter period.

Carnival Tuesday is not on that list. Article 235 makes it, and the municipal holiday, optional: an employer and its staff can agree to observe them, so whether a given office or shop closes is their decision rather than the law's.

The Azores' own holiday

The Azores observe a regional holiday, the Dia dos Açores, on Whit Monday: the Monday after Pentecost. Because it follows Easter, its date moves every year: it falls 50 days after Easter Sunday.

The three municipal holidays

Each municipality keeps the feast of its patron saint:

• Lajes do Pico, 29 June, São Pedro. The câmara describes a mass at the Ermida de São Pedro, the first chapel on the island, and a procession. See Lajes do Pico.
• Madalena, 22 July, Santa Maria Madalena. The feast of the town's patron saint, with a procession through the town. See Madalena.
• São Roque do Pico, 16 August, São Roque. A solemn mass, the municipal bands, and a procession. See São Roque do Pico.

What is on around those dates is on the events calendar.

What closes

The Labour Code is plain about national holidays: every activity that is not allowed to open on a Sunday has to close or stop work (article 236). So plan a national holiday the way you would plan a Sunday: whatever would be shut on a Sunday will be shut, and anything you need is better sorted the day before.

Medicine stays reachable, because the pharmacy on duty rota exists for exactly the hours when the rest are shut. Fuel is the other thing to sort the day before: see fuel stations. If something goes wrong on a holiday, the emergency numbers do not change. Arriving from abroad on a holiday weekend, check how your phone will connect before you land: see mobile data and roaming.

What this page does not tell you

No dated calendar for a specific year, and no opening hours. The moving holidays depend on Easter, and a table of dates copied forward is the kind of thing that quietly goes wrong. The national list comes from the consolidated Labour Code published by the Procuradoria-Geral Regional de Lisboa, because the Diário da República site did not render its text for the machine this page was checked on. See practical information for the rest of the section.