Konsedjus · The concelhos
Nine municipalities, from the highlands of Santa Catarina to the harbour at Cidade Velha. Where a family is from on this island is usually the first thing anyone asks.
Sede · Assomada
The heart of the Badiu interior and its largest inland town. Assomada's market is the commercial centre of the highlands, and Santa Catarina is the concelho most often meant when people say the interior without naming it.
Sede · Tarrafal
The northern tip of the island. At Chão Bom the Portuguese ran the prison camp of 1936–1974; the site is now the Museum of Resistance. The surrounding highlands were among the areas families withdrew into.
Sede · Calheta de São Miguel
North-eastern Santiago. Espinho Branco, a few kilometres from Calheta, holds the largest Rabelado community on the island.
Sede · Pedra Badejo
The east coast and the valleys behind it. Along with Tarrafal, one of the areas Rabelado families first took refuge in during the persecution of the 1940s and after.
Sede · São Domingos
Inland from Praia, in the valleys that run down from the central massif. Long associated with batuku and with tabanka.
Sede · Picos
One of the smallest concelhos and one of the most mountainous, carved out of Santa Catarina in 2005. Agricultural, high, and thinly served by road.
Sede · João Teves
The Órgãos valley in the island's centre, named for the rock formations above it. Also separated from Santa Catarina in 2005. Some of the most productive farmland on Santiago.
Sede · Cidade Velha
Cidade Velha was Ribeira Grande — the first town the Portuguese built here, and the Atlantic's first offshore slaving depot. The ancestors of the Badiu were trafficked through this harbour.
Sede · Praia
The capital, and the destination of most internal migration from the interior. A large share of Badiu families now have one foot in Praia and one in the concelho they came from.
Paternal lineage is only meaningful when it is tied to a place. If a man’s Y-DNA result is recorded together with his paternal grandfather’s birthplace, these nine entries become a map of which lines sit where on the island. None of that data exists yet — the page is built to hold it when it does, and says nothing it cannot support in the meantime.