THE REPUBLIC OF THE WHALE
(REPÚBLICA
DA BALEIA, REPUBLIK DER WALE)
At the beginning of
seventies some Summer holidaymakers in S. Martinho
do Porto had got into the habit of visiting Baleal
once a year. This beautiful village has a wonderful beach with two adjacent
islets. One of them, an island only at high tide, is where the
the Whale.
Even at low tide it is
still an island ( of sorts...) and the narrow bit of
sea between the island and the shore can always be forded. In fact it is only a
large stone with some low vegetation. Well, then, those holidaymakers went
aboard a rubber boat to the island armed with beach towels and the right
adventurous spirit. Once disembarked, one of them proposed the island be a
minuscule state of their own. The idea was immediately approved but kept in the
strictest secrecy lest the political police of the occupation country was no
joke :-) The new country was named The Republic of the Whale and on that very
night the first president was elected a government immediately installed. The
history of this new country is related to the one of the Adamastor.
A few years later, the very
same group - they had meanwhile grown a couple of inches...) visited the Berlengas islands and came to the conclusion that the
Republic of the Whale had to expand. 
The archipelago was then
included in the "larger" Republic and its capital became the
"city of 
The republic had a serious
rival, the Great Duchy of Valverde
(S. Martinho do
Many great adventures took
place in the Republic of the Whale. The best known of them involves a disastrous
catch of a believed-to-be edible octopus, carried out by the well known Anglo -
American explorer team formed by the gentlemanly Sir Lion of the Meadows and
the rather less well behaved Bear B. Mountain...
In the eighties real adult
life tended to make the holidaymakers a little forgetful of their creation but
in the nineties one of the originators found out that there was a large stone
just off the beach of Itacoatiara, near Niterói, on the south eastern Brazilian coast called the
Stone of the Whale.
That stone, just as in Baleal, divides the beach into two different sections: one
of quiet waters the other with some rather large breakers. With these
similarities, and such a suggestive name, the stone ( it
is so large that it contains two lakes...) was made a part of the Republic of
the Whale that became then the first micro country of transcontinental
dimension.
Site created by João Carlos Soares de Mello. See my page with photos, and my professional activities.